


Heartaches and Cupcakes and Sunshine Boys

by everwitch



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Alternate Universe - Writer, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Coming Out, Enemies to Lovers, Falling In Love, Flirting, Fluff, Getting Together, He's in for an adventure, Henry is a gay English major, Henry's father has died before the story starts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, Model Turned Photographer Alex, Panic Attacks, Philip is mentioned but not interacted with on screen, Philip's homophobia is also mentioned, Pining, Pockets of Sunshine, Struggles with mental health, Who just wants to pen words on love in peace, Writer Henry, Yearning, artistic nude photography, finding happiness, grief and mourning, very briefly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27893242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everwitch/pseuds/everwitch
Summary: After a public fight involving a little too much cupcake frosting, romance writer Henry Fox must deal with the obsessive speculation that one of his most despicable characters is based on the very successful model turned photographer Alex Claremont-Diaz. Which couldn't be further from the truth. There's a reason for why Henry's love stories are almost always unrequited, immensely emotional yet devoid of any real hope, and that reason is currently vagueing him in a series of scathing tweets that has Henry's publisher calling a crisis meeting.The solution? Henry must rewrite his upcoming sequel in a way that redeems the character in question completely.The problem? Henry's attempt to get away from it all so he can actually write leads to a direct confrontation with Alex himself. After a series of clandestine kitchen encounters, the two of them end up with a very fragile truce. But can you really find friendship, or maybe even more than years of achingly unrequited yearning, when you don't have the courage to let your disguise fall? How do you really tell the difference between fiction, and the truth?
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 223
Kudos: 214





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t shaping up to be the best week in the life of one Henry Fox.

Still, it also wasn’t the worst week of his life. Not even close. But even so, trying to fend off a whole legion of so-called journalists from pretty much every tabloid in the world who would stop at nothing to get some juicy soundbites on his recent cupcake debacle was turning into something of a challenge.

“It’ll die down,” Pez told him firmly. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. “We’ve put out a proper statement, okay, and that’s all they’re getting. I’m sure some other celebrity will fuck up even worse, somehow, and divert all this attention from you. Any day, now.”

“I’m not a celebrity,” Henry complained. It was, for the most part, true. “Why is this even happening to me? I’ve done nothing to deserve this. Nothing.”

“You’re a New York Times Bestselling Author,” Pez reminded him cheerfully. “And remind me, Henry dearest – did you or did you not start a fight with that lovely Claremont-Diaz at the fundraiser for cancer research, this weekend, over a fucking _cupcake?”_

“I mean.” Henry briefly replayed the events from that night in his head, not for the first time. Definitely not for the last time, either. “I didn’t _start_ the fight.”

“Well. You certainly finished it, that much is clear from the pictures.” Considering the circumstances, Henry should perhaps be grateful that Pez’s voice over the phone sounded only mildly annoyed. Really, he _was_ grateful for Pez. So grateful. As a literary agent, Pez was brilliant, but as Henry’s best friend, he was completely invaluable. “Anyway. I’m sure it won’t be long before all of this blows over.”

Henry sighed.

“I hope you’re right. God, I hope you’re right.”

“It would’ve been less of an issue, of course,” Pez added, his tone for some reason a little more careful. “If it hadn’t been for, you know. That character.”

Henry closed his eyes. They hadn’t actually talked about this part, yet, and he had sort of started to hope that they just... Never would. Honestly, Henry wasn’t sure if there would ever come a day when he’d be completely ready for this conversation.

That character, as Pez had so delicately put it, was one that made frequent appearances in Henry’s debut novel, What Happens In Rio. Rio had gone on to achieve downright shocking levels of critical acclaim. It was what had earned him the moniker of New York Times Bestselling, as well as several frighteningly prestigious awards. After that whole media circus, it had taken Henry months and months to find enough peace of mind to actually _write,_ again.

Anyhow. The character that had recently become the bane of Henry’s very existence was… Well. A piece of work, in many ways. He was always cold, and at times downright merciless, and frequently very rude. Henry had given him a particularly vicious plotline involving a stolen family heirloom, complete with a dark, deceptive motive. At one point, the character was described as having brown eyes and dark curls.

His name? Alexander Cadwell.

It was only hours after the pictures from the so-called cupcake gate had gone viral, that speculation had started about potential connections between Alexander the character, and Alexander the person.

Henry opened his eyes again. He felt a little calmer than before. Still nowhere near ready to explain this whole mess to anyone, not even to Pez. But calm enough to at least string a few sentences together.

“That character, he’s… Pez, he’s completely unrelated. Alexander Cadwell has literally _nothing_ to do with Alexander Claremont-Diaz. I swear.”

“Oh, you know I have every reason to believe you.” Pez’s tone was full of sympathy. “Our real problem is, pretty much the whole internet disagrees. But hey, it’s like I said, earlier. It’ll blow over. Soon, I’m sure we won’t have to worry about… Shit. Oh, _shit.”_

“What?” Henry asked. Pez was quiet. “Pez, what?”

“Okay,” Pez said. He sounded oddly calm. “So, this is bad. Really bad. He’s tweeting about you.”

“Who?”

“Who do you _think?_ You might want to sit down for this, okay? Oh man, there’s another, he’s still going-”

Henry put down his phone. He reached for his laptop and, with shaking hands, managed to browse his way to twitter. There, at the top of his feed, were a series of life-changing tweets.

**Alex Claremont-Diaz @ACD  
** It’s been brought to my attention that a certain author of romantic fiction has chosen to imagine a not-so-favorable character who just happens to bear my name and have my exact appearance. I don’t have much to say about this, except the following.

 **Alex Claremont-Diaz @ACD  
** I had never met said romance author before our eventful interaction over cupcakes, this weekend. (My best shirt is still at the cleaners, if you’re wondering). We had certainly never met at the time when he wrote about the character in question.

 **Alex Claremont-Diaz @ACD  
** However, I have good reason to believe that our not meeting before is actually due to him intentionally avoiding me for years. How that fits into the events of this past week, and the depiction of my namesake in his work, is something you may interpret for yourself.

 **Alex Claremont-Diaz @ACD  
** I have no interest in continuing a fight that I, quite frankly, don’t understand the origin of, and I’m certainly not going to reach out to someone who shows no real willingness to properly explain himself.

 **Alex Claremont-Diaz @ACD  
** And before you ask, yes, I’ve read their fucking statement. That statement wasn’t written by him. Hats off to his PR team, who are certainly doing their best in a very shitty situation.  
 ****

 **Alex Claremont-Diaz @ACD  
** Anyhow. That’s all. Take care out there, folks, and take it from me – if you ever spot your nemesis over by an appetizing cupcake stand, just walk away. He's not worth it.

Henry stared at his screen. It couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be his actual bloody _life._

“Henry? Henry, are you still there?”

In something of a daze, Henry picked up his phone again.

“Yeah. I’m... Yeah.”

“Look.” Pez sounded significantly more stressed than he had, before. “I have three – no, four – emails from Shaan. I’m coming to pick you up, okay? We’re officially in crisis mode.”

By the time Pez pulled up outside of Henry’s flat, Henry’s twitter mentions were blowing up to the point where his phone had been rendered unusable. Henry turned it off, set it down on the kitchen table and just left it there. He slipped into the passenger seat of Pez’s car and tried to think as little as possible during the short drive to his publisher’s office.

The thing about Alex Claremont-Diaz, a very successful model turned photographer, was that he had a lot of followers on social media. An intimidating amount, really.

The other thing about Alex Claremont-Diaz was the little known fact that Henry Fox, a writer of deceptively tragic romance novels, was deeply, _helplessly_ in love with Alex. He had been for years, now. It was something of a silly embarrassment, given that the two of them had genuinely never met before that fateful fundraiser.

Still, Alex had always managed to stay in Henry’s orbit. Henry had seen him on all those magazine covers, just like the rest of the world, and that had been the beginning of a massive, all-consuming crush. Then he’d gotten to know June through an online course in creative writing. The two of them had formed a fun, easy friendship, based around shared snippets of their respective writing projects and a mutual love for Jane Austen adaptations. Henry hadn’t known, back then, that she was Alex’s sister. The first time she’d sent him a selfie of herself together with Alex, he had been in a complete state of shock.

The second time, when June had shared a family photo on Christmas, he’d almost felt like he was doing something forbidden.

The third time, when June had randomly decided that Henry needed to see a picture of literally just Alex – _look at my idiot brother, help me convince him that shirt is an abomination_ – Henry had swallowed his pride and saved it to his phone.

It had only gotten worse from there. June had continued to share anecdotes about her life, little stories and pictures that frequently featured her brother. Through June, Henry had also gotten to know Nora, a sharp, quick-witted woman who somehow understood Henry’s humour on a level that still surprised Henry to this day. The two of them had ended up close friends, friends who had made something of a habit of coming to stay with each other when either of them needed peace and quiet to get work done before a deadline. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement that had saved Henry many times over in his literary career. And, God, Nora always talked about Alex. _Always._ It was like a second pair of floodgates had opened and Henry was being drowned by an endless, enticing stream of _Alex, Alex, Alex._

It had been more than enough material for Henry to construct an elaborate fantasy of the man. Especially combined with everything that was already publicly available. Henry had looked at the pictures from every campaign, he'd read every interview, he had seen Alex’s viral Ted Talk well over a hundred times. Partly because Alex had been wearing a _very_ well fitted suit for the occasion, but mostly because that was the time and place where Alex had chosen to come out.

Henry had tried to get over his completely ridiculous feelings, then. Really, he _had._ He’d looked at Alex in that video, had seen him out and proud and confident and charismatic, and he had thought to himself, oh no. Oh _no._ This man was shining too brightly. If their paths ever did cross, Henry would most certainly burn. He would take one look at Alex’s radiance and be forever blinded by it, and forever in grief. Alex was someone Henry could never let himself have.

There weren't many assumptions in Alex's tweets that were even close to the truth, but one thing that Henry couldn't deny was this: he had, in fact, avoided meeting Alex Claremont-Diaz for years.

(He also hadn't written that statement. He had approved it, yes, but he hadn't _written_ it. How Alex could possibly have known that was quite beyond Henry's comprehension.)

Unfortunately, Henry's determination to get Alexander out of his head, and more importantly out of his heart, had never amounted to much.

Still, on the plus side: being in unrequited love with an unattainable fantasy had done absolute _wonders_ for Henry’s literary career.

It was truly an endless source for inspiration. And also, at this particular point in Henry’s career, extremely ironic. Because while the vicious Alex Cadwell truly had nothing to do with Alex Claremont-Diaz, _everything else_ about Henry’s writing did. Every warm, beautiful scene he'd written, every stilted confession and tragic resolution. There was a reason for why the love stories in Henry’s novels were almost always unrequited, immensely emotional yet devoid of any real hope, and that reason had just vagued him in a series of scathing tweets that might actually bring an abrupt end to all of Henry’s literary ambitions.

Unless, of course, Henry was somehow able to actually fix this.

Somehow.

Judging by the look on Shaan’s face when Henry entered his office, Henry wasn’t about to be offered some sort of magical solution to this whole mess.

“Close the door.” Shaan’s tone was frighteningly efficient. “And _sit,_ Henry.”

Henry hastened to comply.

Shaan clicked on something on his laptop and turned it around so Henry could see. The screen showed the beginning of an article that seemed to summarize both Alex’s recent tweets and the cupcake debacle from that weekend – God, _already?_ How long had it been since that first tweet, half an hour? Henry grimaced as he looked at the picture they’d chosen. He hadn’t seen this particular shot before – the expression on Alex’s face as Henry smeared a good amount of cupcake frosting across his shirt was really quite something.

“So,” Shaan said curtly. “This won’t do.”

“No, I know," Henry agreed quickly. “I’m not… I really didn’t think things would escalate like this.”

“There wouldn't have been anything to escalate, if you had only kept your cool at that fundraiser.” Shaan watched Henry for a moment. When he spoke again, his tone was still very matter-of-fact, but there was something like actual curiosity in his eyes. "What did you ever do to that Claremont-Diaz? This all seems a little excessive for a bit of frosting.”

"I don't… We hadn't ever met, before that event." Henry shifted in his seat. "I've honestly got no clue why he's reacting like this."

"Well." Shaan turned his laptop back around. "Either way, we must deal with the consequences. There are two other articles about Claremont-Diaz's tweets and we've had press inquiries from four additional publications. And that's not counting the tabloids. They're all asking the same thing – what is the _real_ story behind the character Alexander Cadwell? Evidently, our statement didn't do shit."

Henry wasn't certain of whether or not he had ever heard Shaan say _shit,_ before. Somehow, Shaan actually made the word sound quite formal.

"I could… Apologize again? Maybe, if we put out another statement-"

"They wouldn't buy it," Shaan interrupted. "No. No more statements. In fact, we're redacting our last one."

"We… We are?" Henry chewed on his bottom lip. "I thought it clarified things quite well. About how Cadwell is a work of fiction, and all that."

"The whole internet is currently obsessed with the idea that Alexander Cadwell _isn't_ a work of fiction. That's not something we can change with something as primitive as another press release." Shaan fixed Henry with one of his signature looks. It was the one that was both decidedly reproachful, and completely resolute. It rarely boded well. "What you really need to do, here, is make sure that you take back control over this narrative. Properly, this time."

"Right." Henry nodded, despite his apprehension. "How, uh. How do I do that?"

"It's simple, isn't it?" Shaan said calmly. "You're rewriting."

Henry stared at him.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You're rewriting," Shaan repeated. Unfortunately, he sounded quite firm. "The sequel to Rio hasn't actually gone to print, yet, which means that we still have time. You're rewriting it."

"But that's…" Henry begun weakly, only to trail off.

It sounded impossible.

Five years after the initial publication of What Happens in Rio, Henry had finally felt that it was time to write a sequel. Titled From Waterloo With Love, it was scheduled for printing in only a matter of weeks. There had been so many edits, they'd barely locked down the final draft as it was, and they still had proofreading and typesetting to deal with before their final deadline. Would they even make it in time, if Henry had to start revising again?

"It's the perfect solution," Shaan continued. His decisive tone suggested that this wasn't up for discussion. "Like it or not, the world has chosen to believe that your Alexander Cadwell is this Alexander Claremont-Diaz. Fighting it hasn't gotten us anywhere, so we have to tackle the problem from a different angle. We're going to have to play along."

"But… But Waterloo is _finished."_ Henry swallowed. "And it's… I've worked so hard on it, trying to get it perfect, and it's actually turned out exactly how I wanted it. It's _good,_ Shaan. If I had to change it, I'd… I couldn't. I can't. Please."

It had taken literal years for Henry to get to the point where he could look at his own writing and think, _yes, I like this. This is nice. This turned out well._ From Waterloo With Love had been the first time that Henry had actually caught himself thinking, _I can't wait for people to read this._ That same week, Henry had brought along a bottle of Moët to his therapy session.

"I'm sure it'll still be excellent, when you're done with it." Any other day, Henry would've been pleased to hear Shaan have such faith in him. "It's not like you will need to rewrite the whole thing. With a few, smart edits, I'm sure-"

"Alexander Cadwell barely even appears in Waterloo, I can't just-"

"Oh, you can. And you will." Shaan's eyes narrowed. "You got yourself into this mess, Henry, and you're going to get yourself out of it. I know you can do it. I've had several famously cynical critics tell me, in confidence, that your ability to capture feelings of adoration and rapture and desperate longing on the page has frequently moved them to tears. You'll have to put that talent to good use, in the coming weeks. When you're done with Alexander Cadwell, every reader better believe that you'd like nothing more than to _marry_ this Alexander Claremont-Diaz. Understood?"

"Well." God, how was any of this happening? "Actually-"

"You've got one month." Shaan looked back down at his computer. "We should still be able to handle proofing and typesetting in time. I can get you Angela and Brian. They're quick."

"No, Shaan, wait." _One_ month? "I don't… I've got no idea where I'd even start. The story barely even involves Alexander Cadwell, this time, and the parts that do… I can't just suddenly present him as some sort of wonderful saint, a redemption like that would require context and proper development, and I… From Waterloo With Love isn't about _any_ of that. I'm not… I don't think it could turn out well."

Shaan looked up again. For some reason, his expression actually seemed to soften slightly.

"Look," he said. "Quite frankly, Henry, this isn't the first time we're giving you a second chance."

Henry flinched. Abruptly, he looked away.

"No. No, of course."

"Windsor Publishing stood by you, after Rio, despite the fact that you couldn't present any actual progress on your next project for well over a year." Shaan's tone was very plain. "It was the right decision. You've proven yourself capable of repeating that first success, at least in terms of sales. But you're still far too prone to go weeks without handing in so much as a sentence, only to show up with fifty pages overnight. You're inconsistent. A lot of our editors find you difficult to work with. And now this."

"No, I know." Henry clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap. He swallowed. "I'll fix this. I'll figure it out."

"I know you can do it," Shaan repeated. His efficient tone from before was back. "Go home, Henry. Go home and write. I'll have Pez check in with you and report back to me."

If Pez tried to say something to Henry during the car ride back, Henry didn't hear him. It was like a thick fog had settled over his mind. He felt small, and numb, and strangely cold.

At one point, Henry barely registered Pez asking where his keys were. Wordlessly, Henry dug them out of his pocket.

A while later, Henry opened his eyes.

He was on his couch. The lights in the room were dim, and there was a body next to him – ah. Pez.

Why was Pez still here?

"Hey, easy." Pez quickly reached out to still Henry's movements as Henry tried to stand up. "I'll get you a glass of water, okay? Don't move. Be right back."

Henry watched as Pez walked out into the kitchen. He rubbed absentmindedly at his temple. God, his head hurt.

What time could it be?

Did Pez really have reason to look so frightfully concerned?

"Hey," Pez said gently. He pressed a tall glass of pleasantly cold water into Henry's hands. "There you go."

Henry obediently took a large gulp.

"I think I'm alright."

"That certainly makes one of us." Pez sat down again, his eyes not leaving Henry for a second. "How do you feel?"

"Tired." Henry experimentally rolled his shoulders. "Um, sore. Oh, and I kind of never want to show my face anywhere ever again."

"Well. At least something's back to normal." Pez barely smiled. "Shaan filled me in on everything you agreed on.

Henry grimaced. Suddenly, the unexpected turnout from his afternoon meeting was flooding back to the forefront of his mind. God, he was fucked. He was completely and utterly fucked.

How was he supposed to placate Alex Claremont-Diaz and his rabid twitter followers by cramming the redemption of Alexander Cadwell into From Waterloo With Love, when Cadwell was the _one_ aspect of the whole Rio universe that wasn't about the real Alex in the first place?

"Agreed isn't necessarily the word I'd use."

"Well." Pez tilted his head slightly to the side. "We could take a moment to consider other options."

Henry frowned slightly.

"Shaan made it abundantly clear that there are none. It's rewrite or bust."

"Oh, fuck Shaan." For some reason, Pez sounded almost angry. "He'll get over himself. Why don't we talk about what all of this means for you, rather than Windsor Publishing, and whether or not you actually want to go through with this?"

"No, Pez, there's no need." Henry took another gulp of water. "It's not like… I mean. Not unless the world has magically forgotten that any of this happened?"

Pez slowly shook his head.

Henry sighed. He rubbed at his temple.

"Is there, um. Is there any part of the internet's reaction to all of this that I should be aware of?"

"Well," Pez said delicately. "You're kind of a meme, now? Someone turned your cupcake fight into a whole bunch of gifs, and actually, it's really-"

"Pez," Henry cut in. "Please. Spare me anything that doesn't actually _matter."_

"There's not… Much of that." For some reason, Pez seemed to hesitate. "Alex hasn't tweeted anything else, so that's something. It's mostly just a big bunch of jokes and, you know. Intense speculation."

Somehow, Henry didn't like the sound of that.

"Speculation about Alexander Cadwell?"

"Speculation about your… Views on certain issues." Pez sounded apprehensive. "You know how Claremont-Diaz is quite a favourite in the LGBT community?"

Henry nearly flinched.

"Oh no. They don't think that I think…?"

"I mean. Not _really."_ Pez was quiet for a moment. "There's not a lot to go on, if one wanted to frame you as a raging homophobe. That's a hard sell considering some of your novels. It's more like, a lot of queer folks out there aren't too pleased with the idea that you're going after one of their own? Even if they don't seem to think you're taking shots at him for his sexuality, specifically."

Henry actually smiled. God, the irony.

"Well," he said lightly. "Think it'd help, if I came out?"

Pez didn't answer for just one second too long.

"Wait," Henry said sharply. He raised both eyebrows. "It _would?_ How on earth?"

"Henry, I'm not saying you should. Not over something as certifiably stupid as this."

"But it could help?"

"Well, it… It would certainly make some people stop putting your allyship in question, in addition to everything else. And it might give everyone something else to talk about for a while."

"Okay. Then, no." Henry shook his head. To think that there was one alternative he actually liked even _less_ than Shaan's impossible demand of a speedy rewrite. "If my family learned that I'm gay in the middle of all this chaos, I don't think Philip or my grandmother would even… No. This is clearly not the time."

"I think you're right." Pez nodded grimly. "So. What I'm hearing is, time to drag your magnum opus back to the draft stage and make some desperate edits."

Henry smiled weakly.

"It's not my magnum opus."

"No, it is. It absolutely is." It had always astounded Henry, how Pez could be so in awe of his clearly mostly mediocre writing abilities. Still – From Waterloo With Love _was_ good. "And I'm sure it'll still be fantastic, when we come out on the other side of this. If Shaan is right about anything, it's that if there is anyone who can do this, it's you. And he doesn't even know that you've kind of got the ultimate secret weapon up your sleeve."

Henry raised both eyebrows.

Pez grinned.

"You actually love Alex. For _real._ All you've got to do is project every bit of that onto this Cadwell persona, and you'll have it in the bag. How hard can it be?"

Abruptly, Henry looked away.

He thought of Alexander Cadwell, of the man's angry, destructive mindset and lethal, razor-sharp edges. He was genuinely _nothing_ like the real Alex. It was going to take work.

A lot of work.

"I just don't understand how I'm supposed to finish in time."

"Maybe time to bring out another one of your secret weapons," Pez suggested encouragingly. "Aren't you always at your most productive when you write cooped up with that lady friend of yours?"

"Don't call Nora my lady friend. It sounds weird." Henry grimaced. "I don't know, Pez, I think she's back in the states right now. And I'm honestly not sure if I'd be entirely welcome, right this moment. Remember how she is actually close friends with Alex? The real one."

"Still. It can't hurt to ask, can it?"

Well.

Henry's phone was almost hopelessly clogged with notifications, when he started it again. He almost considered just chucking it out the window and going out to get a new one. Almost. Instead, Henry quickly and methodically deleted a good amount of apps. Twitter, of course, but also facebook and messenger, instagram and snapchat… Even pinterest, just in case.

Left behind were a bunch of genuinely pointless linkedin push notes, and a _lot_ of texts.

Henry didn't bother replying to most of the messages. He sent two syllables in response to his mother's many concerns, _I'm fine,_ and six syllables as acknowledgement of Bea's impassioned rant about fucking Americans on twitter, _this is why I love you._ A little further down, there was one message that made Henry pause.

It was from Nora.

_oh my god, I can't even talk to Alex right now. are you okay?_

Oh.

 _I've been better,_ Henry typed out with shaking hands. _Actually, Nora, could I ask you a favour?_

_of course!! I'm here for you. June says hi, btw. she sincerely wishes she'd been the one to get Alex so gloriously cupcaked. idk what he said to you at that party but knowing you both, I'm just going to assume that I'm so sorry on his behalf. that boy gets way too caught up in his own drama sometimes._

Henry wasn't particularly inclined to relive the whole cupcake showdown once again. Really, he'd done that more than enough times this past week.

_Actually, I've got an unexpected writing deadline in a few weeks. Is there any chance I could stay with you for a while? To get away from everything and just focus. You can say no, I know this is extremely sudden._

It took Nora long enough to respond for Henry to start to doubting whether or not he should have sent that message, if the two of them were even really friends, and actually also his own self-worth and whether his very existence truly served any kind of-

_Henry, of course. of course! although, I'm kind of in Texas right now? but you could come here, it'd actually be perfect. I'm spending the next couple of months working on a project that requires a lot of outdoor photography and we've rented this lake house as our main location. come and hide out here in the literal middle of nowhere, you'd be so welcome. I'll protect you._

Henry stared at the message, blinking. Hide out in the middle of nowhere? Escape from all those tabloids and his editors and his family and just do the work, write and get it done, put all of this behind him, and do it all with one of his closest friends right _there_ whenever he needed a break, or a bit of laughter, or a hug?

Less than half an hour later, Henry had booked a flight.

In the taxi on his way to the airport, Henry sent off a text to Nora with his flight details, then a couple more texts to his mother reassuring her that he really was fine, and a few almost humorous lines to Bea. After that he pulled up his browser and, quite grimly, typed his way to Alex's twitter.

Just like Pez had told him, there weren't any additional tweets. Thank God.

Very carefully, Henry took a screenshot of each of the tweets that Alex had posted earlier that day. Then he resolutely closed the tab and opened up his folders of saved files. His thumb hovered for a second before he clicked on his favourite folder.

It was a collection that Henry had kept for years. It consisted mostly of pictures, but there were also snippets of videos and a frankly embarrassing amount of unfinished poetry. Among the pictures and videos, Henry's favourites were definitely those of Alex smiling, and Alex laughing, and in one especially memorable instance, Alex going for a swim for a particularly enticing underwear campaign two years prior. Henry still thought of those pictures at _least_ once a day.

He had created the folder after one of his most productive therapy sessions. Henry had started to write what would become his first draft of Rio, and there were still so many things that he had only just started to process. So much sadness, and agony, and hurt. Somedays, he felt almost fine, but he still had bad days, awful days even, days of feeling completely numb and void of anything other than grief.

His therapist had fixed him with a somewhat stern expression.

"Look. You’ve got to start allowing yourself happiness in your daily life, again. You’ve got to _allow_ yourself to feel happy things. You need to actively remind yourself that you are allowed joy, that it's okay to feel something other than loss and regret. I want you to try and make very practical systems for that. You're going to need some way to check in with yourself and remind yourself that there are good things in this world, too. If you can find _anything_ that makes your heart feel a little bit lighter, then find a way to keep coming back to that feeling in your daily life. Let's try and give you some pockets of sunshine. Okay?"

Henry had created the folder on his phone that same evening. He had named it Sunshine Boy.

After adding the screenshots of those awful tweets, Henry allowed himself to slowly scroll through the entire folder. He paused indulgently at each of his favourite pictures, his eyes lingering on all of those wonderful smiles. Finally, he read through those tweets from start to finish one more time. Then he closed the folder.

After a moment's consideration, he locked it, too.

It felt final, somehow. Like he was closing a chapter. And maybe he was. Henry wasn't sure if he would ever have the strength to open that folder again.

He tried to start writing on the plane, but failed.

Then he tried to get some sleep, but failed.

By the time Henry’s taxi turned into the driveway that led a house on top of a hill with an absolutely stunning view of a beautiful lake, he’d slipped from exhaustion into hyper awareness and back again at least three times.

Henry stepped out of the car just as Nora burst out through a pair of teal doors.

“Henry. Oh, _Henry.”_

Henry only just kept his eyes from watering as Nora wrapped him into a fierce hug. He hugged her back, just as tightly. He’d _missed_ Nora. If only this visit had come about under more pleasant circumstances.

“Got any sleep on the plane?” Nora asked, pulling back just a little bit. “Jesus, Henry. You look like shit.”

Henry grinned weakly.

“I’m just… I’m so glad to be here. I’m so glad to be _away.”_

Nora nodded.

“Come on, let’s get you settled. We can talk more tomorrow. I’ll be a little busy in the coming weeks with my work commitments, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find some time to debrief properly. And, you know. Actually hang out.”

“I’d like that.” Henry glanced around them a little bit. The lake house, with it’s orange exterior and accents in pinks and reds, was really quite something. “You said something about outdoor photography?”

“Yeah, we’ve got quite the campaign planned.” Nora grinned. “I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Now, come on. There’s a space in the basement that’s basically both a bedroom and a study. It’s very much out of everyone’s way and actually really cozy. I think you’ll really like it.”

Nora wasn’t very far off the mark. Henry _loved_ it.

He opened up his suitcase, pulled out a pair of pajamas and… Dumped them on the bed. Instead, he reached for his backpack. Soon, he had his laptop set up on a large desk, along with a printout of his current draft and highlighters in three different colors.

Quickly, Henry headed back up the stairs. He found the kitchen through a door to the left. Before long, he was bringing a pot of water to a boil and had located both milk and sugar. Just as he was opening another cupboard in search of a decently sized mug, he heard a pair of footsteps approaching in the hallway.

“Nora? Is that you?”

Henry knew that voice.

Henry would have known that voice _anywhere._

The footsteps moved into the kitchen. Henry turned around, very slowly.

For a moment, they just looked at one another.

“What,” said Alex Claremont-Diaz flatly, “Are _you_ doing here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been planning this fic for quite a while, now, and I'm literally giddy about the fact that I'm ready to start posting! with my current outline, the total number of chapters will be five, but I don't want to jinx it by adding a total chapter count to AO3. huge shoutout to the RWRB discord server for helping me decide on some significant plotpoints, and for helping me choose a title! ♡


	2. Chapter 2

It was impossible. It _should_ be impossible.

And yet, Henry Fox was standing in the kitchen of the lake house, watching Alex with a completely blank expression.

No. An _infuriatingly_ blank expression.

Why was every single thing that Henry Fox ever said or did so goddamn infuriating?

“I, uh.” Oh, fucking _fantastic,_ apparently Henry thought that Alex actually wanted an answer to his question. “I guess I’m making tea."

"In my kitchen?" Alex questioned through gritted teeth.

Something passed over Henry's guarded expression.

"That's not… You don't live here." Henry shifted his feet. If Alex hadn't known better, he would have said that Henry looked almost frightened. "Do you?"

"For the next couple of months, I do," Alex informed him tersely. "And I don't know how you got here, or why, but honestly? I don't actually care. You need to _leave."_

Henry just looked at him for a moment.

"Oh," he said. His tone was surprisingly quiet. "Nora said, outdoor photography… Oh. Of course."

What?

Nora?

No. No way.

"Did… Did _Nora_ invite you here?" Alex spat out. Jesus. He'd known Nora was furious at him, after those tweets, but putting Alex and Henry under the same roof seemed a little too daring, even for her. "Fuck. Why would she-"

"She did." Henry seemed to have regained some of the cool indifference that Alex recalled so well from their last encounter. "And I… I can't actually go back home, right now."

"Of course you can," Alex snapped. "It's easy. You go out the door, hop on a plane-"

"That's not what I…" Henry interrupted defiantly, only to trail off. "You know what, never mind. I don't have time for this."

"Hey." Alex watched Henry dump a teabag in his mug and pour hot water over it, then add two sugar cubes and just a little bit of milk. His eyes narrowed as Henry carefully took the mug in his hands, evidently intending to leave the kitchen. "I'm not finished. What the fuck do you mean by-"

"Nora's invited me to stay for a few weeks," Henry cut in. His tone was maddeningly composed. "You got a problem with that? Take it up with her. Goodnight, Alex."

Then he left.

Alex let himself lean against one of the kitchen counters. He exhaled, slowly.

What the actual fuck?

"What the actual _fuck?"_

"Oh, good," Nora said airily. She was sitting by the window in the bedroom that was hers for the duration of their project. "You've met."

Alex stomped his way inside and closed the door behind him.

"Why would you do this to me? How could you even _think_ of inviting-"

"I'm gonna stop you right there." Nora's expression had quickly turned quite dangerous. "We said we'd make use of the spare bedrooms and have friends over, if we wanted to. Henry is my friend, he's one of my _best_ friends. I've never cared much for your opinion on that and I'm certainly not about to start now. I invited him to stay. End of story."

"Seriously?" Alex exclaimed. God, why did Nora have to be so fucking protective of everyone she loved? "Did you even for _one_ second consider-"

"Alex. Stop." Nora's eyes narrowed. "You don't get to do this. Okay? You don't get to tell me what to think, or try to make me choose, or whatever. And honestly? Right now, I’m not sure if I'd actually choose you."

Fucking _fuck._

"He hates me," Alex told her flatly. "Nora, he _hates_ me. Did you read any of those things he wrote about me? I can show you – I’ve made a list.”

Actually, over the course of the past few days, Alex had made _several_ lists, followed by a sort of master index to keep track of his rapidly growing directory of reasons why Henry Fox utterly despised him. Alex’s old, dog-eared copy of What Happens In Rio had received something of a makeover, involving a lot of furious underlining and an onslaught of post-it notes. Really, it had started to look a lot more like one of Alex’s textbooks for his online course in visual arts, rather than a novel that one would read for pleasure.

And maybe that was just as well. It wasn’t like Alex was going to be able to actually read Rio from start to finish, ever again. Not after this.

Nora rolled her eyes.

"Henry doesn't _hate_ you, Alex. You two barely even know each other."

"Only because that asshole has intentionally avoided me for literal years."

“Avoided you? Don’t be so dramatic. Henry wouldn’t-”

“Remember that time when you invited him to go camping with the three of us, and he told you he was swamped with work, but then I got sick, and suddenly he was completely available to take my spot?” Alex itched to run over to his room and retrieve his itemized record of _instances when Henry Fox had definitely avoided him._ “Or last New Years, when Henry left your party two hours before midnight, which just so happened to be five minutes before I showed up? Or when I surprised you with a visit in London, last summer, and Henry was there, and all of a sudden he just… Wasn’t? And he texted you a day later and said he’d just had to go?”

Nora actually paused.

“Alright,” she said a few moments later. “That’s a bit sketchy, I’ll give you that. But, Alex, I _know_ Henry. Okay? He’s just the sweetest, kindest person there is. Whatever this whole thing between you is, I know that he’s such a good guy. And so are _you._ Even though you’ve been a bit of an ass, lately.”

“Have not.”

Nora raised both eyebrows.

“Twitter, Alex,” she said bluntly. “Really? You are so much better than that.”

“It wasn’t… I was actually very respectful.” Alex grimaced. “Or, you know. Mostly respectful.”

“Oh, don’t even try.” Nora shook her head. Her expression wasn’t quite angry, anymore. She looked more like she was resigned, and actually? That only made Alex feel worse. “You were picking a fight. You got your fucking legions of fans to go after him for you, and that was exactly what you wanted, wasn’t it? Bad form, Alex.”

Abruptly, Alex looked away from her. He shoved his hands in his pockets. God. Why couldn’t he have picked a best friend who wouldn’t insist upon always expecting the best of him, and who didn't hold him accountable for all of his actions?

“I was angry,” Alex told her. His voice came out a little quieter than before. “It wasn’t… I just had to do something. Anything.”

“Well. Maybe you had a right to be upset.” Nora’s tone was surprisingly gentle. “But you handled it like fucking shit, and now Henry is literally hiding from the world in our basement, and I’m sorry, but you don’t get to have an opinion about that on account of the fact that you're the one who got him into this mess in the first place.”

That made Alex look up again.

“You know, that’s debatable.”

“It’s not,” Nora said decisively. Still, she almost smiled towards him. “And I think you actually know that, too.”

Alex didn’t answer that. Not because Nora was _right,_ precisely. Alex just wasn’t entirely certain that she was completely, one hundred percent wrong.

“Well,” Nora said a few moments later. Unfortunately, she sounded pleased. “It is what it is. You two will simply have to tolerate each other for the next month or so. Henry has work that he needs to get done, and his sleep patterns are always highly irregular when he’s got an important writing deadline coming up. You and I will be busy with our project, and we’re mostly going to be outdoors, anyway. You probably won’t even see that much of him, in the end.”

Alex sighed. He ran a hand through his hair.

“I guess I can live with that,” he admitted. “But, you know. A bit of warning wouldn’t have hurt.”

“That’s fair,” Nora allowed. “Next time I invite Henry somewhere, I’ll let you know.”

“Now, hold on-”

“So,” Nora cut in, her tone suddenly all excitement. “Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?”

Alex wanted to keep arguing. He really did. Except, he definitely also wanted to be excited with Nora for their project, for everything they’d already accomplished and for all that was yet to come. Such as tomorrow. Alex couldn’t _wait_ for tomorrow.

In the end, his euphoria over their impending success won out.

“I know, right?” he agreed eagerly. “I still can’t really believe that Raf said yes.”

“Oh, I never believed he would say anything else.” Nora grinned. “Really, we’re the ones doing him a huge favor.”

“Still. Rafael Luna. _The_ Rafael Luna.” Alex grinned, too. He felt giddy with it. “Anyone could take killer shots of him, he was made to be in front of the camera, but _I’m_ going to turn his body into actual fucking art.

“Fucking politicically porposeful art, you mean,” Nora reminded him cheerfully. “Eyes on the prize, Diaz.”

“Of course.” Alex bounced a little on his feet. “I’m so pumped. This all feels, you know. Really big.”

“Well. It is big.” Nora smiled. “I’ve been running the numbers on our potential impact, and it’s looking extremely promising. Big might be something of an understatement.”

“Good.” Alex grinned widely. “Perfect.”

“Well. I’m gonna get some sleep.” Nora yawned. “And so should you. Don’t stay up all night cramming lighting techniques or whatever, alright? I need my absolutely best Alex by my side, tomorrow.”

Alex didn’t exactly assure Nora that he wouldn’t maybe study for a good while, but he did promise to get at least a few hours of proper sleep.

On his way back to his own bedroom, Alex passed by the stairs that led down to the basement. To Henry's room. God, Alex still couldn’t quite believe that Henry Fox was actually down there, for real, most likely sipping his tea and spilling beautiful, enchanting words onto a page. Words that Alex already knew he would never be able to let himself read.

Alex closed his bedroom door firmly behind him. He went over to his mostly unpacked suitcase and dug out his copy of Rio from underneath a pair of jeans. His hands only shook a little bit as he let the book fall open. As always, it opened naturally on the page that contained Alex’s favourite paragraph.

_But such was the fate of reckless affection, and misguided fondness, and unguarded adoration. Such was the fate of a young fool so irrevocably captivated that he allowed mere fantasy to become hope, and hope grew so strong, it one day triumphed over reason. It was never meant to end well. Yet at the same time, it never truly ended at all. Instead, hope grew, and hope continued to grow. And one day, the fantasy had become so all-encompassing, no one would ever again call it by its proper name._

_Such was the cruel fate of unforseen affection under truly unfavourable circumstances._

It was the paragraph that had made Alex fall completely in love with Henry’s writing.

He hadn’t been overwhelmingly excited when June had first gifted him What Happens In Rio for his birthday. “I actually know the author,” June had told him eagerly. “Henry is friends with Nora, too, and this is his debut novel. It’s been doing pretty well. I’m so excited for him.”

The book had been signed, which made sense, since June seemed to have purchased it directly from Henry. It wasn’t a particularly sentimental dedication, which also made sense, given that Henry didn’t really have much of a connection with Alex.

_Alex,_

_June says you’ve had an unfortunately cold and dreary spring, this year. I hope this novel can bring you just a little bit of sunshine._

_Henry Fox_

Alex had thought about reaching out to Henry, after he’d finished reading Rio. He had really, truly loved it. The novel was dark at times, but still so full of hope and warmth and dream-like longing. It was, in so many ways, absolutely stunning.

Yet in the end, Alex hadn’t conveyed any of this to Henry. Rio had quickly soared on the bestseller lists and had gotten an enormous amount of raving reviews. Soon, Henry Fox was kind of everywhere, appearing in many awkward interviews and making the occasional stilted acceptance speech. Alex had felt almost sorry for him, as much as you can really feel sorry for someone who seems plagued by their own groundbreaking success.

Alex had figured that he’d get the opportunity to tell Henry in person how much Rio meant to him, at some point. Given how much time Henry seemed to spend with Nora, and how frequently Henry’s name popped up in conversations with June, it seemed practically inevitable.

Of course, Alex couldn’t have been more wrong.

Despite the fact that Henry Fox seemed determined to make sure their paths never crossed, Alex had continued to read everything that Henry published. Literally everything. He’d read Henry’s poetry collection and his occasional short stories and each of his infinitely tragic romance novels. And Alex had utterly loved every word. Everything Henry wrote was so perfectly, achingly beautiful. Yet among the stories Henry had written, Alex had always found himself coming back to Rio, and every time he did, he’d ended up lingering on that one, pivotal paragraph.

It had been during one of his many rereads, one late night after Alex had come back from a never-ending photoshoot and had turned to Rio for a comfortable distraction and had, of course, indulgently started over on that special paragraph, that it had happened. Suddenly, Alex had found himself putting the book down. He had taken a deep breath. And for the first time in a long time, for the first time in literal _years,_ Alex had thought back on his intimate friendship with Liam, back in high school, and finally felt brave enough to reexamine what had really come to pass between the two of them.

Unforeseen affection under truly unfavourable circumstances. Huh.

Alex had somehow ended up calling Liam, right there and then. Which wasn’t necessarily the most dignified course of action. But as startling, middle-of-the-night bisexual awakenings go, it could clearly have been _so_ much worse.

The next morning, Alex had made himself get out of bed early. He’d put on a big pot of coffee, located his favourite notebook and had started to pen down what was initially intended to be an instagram video, but ultimately ended up the first draft of his shockingly viral Ted Talk.

When Alex had spotted Henry at that fundraiser for cancer research, he had almost walked right into a wall.

Here was his chance. After years and years of being indirectly stood up by the man, here was his _chance._

Alex let himself take a deep breath. He quickly checked his appearance in his selfie camera. Then he gathered his courage, and resolutely made his way over.

“Henry Fox, right?” Alex put on his best smile, the one that made all the art directors go _yes, great, more of that, perfect, keep it up._ He bravely stuck out his hand. “Hello. I’m Alex Claremont-Diaz.”

Henry turned towards him, very slowly. He looked at Alex with a carefully composed non-smile.

“Hi.”

It was honestly ridiculous, how briefly Henry shook Alex’s hand. Really, Henry pulled back after less than half a second, almost like he was genuinely frightened that one touch from Alex would make him burn.

Right.

“I think you know my sister?” Alex offered through a somewhat less relaxed smile. “And one of my close friends, Nora. Actually, Nora rarely ever shuts up about you.”

Henry nodded, once. It took Alex a moment to realize that Henry wasn’t going to offer anything more in return.

“You know, I’ve read your work.” Alex actually had to look away for a moment. It should be impossible for Henry to unsettle him this badly, when Henry had barely even spoken one word. Alex swallowed. “It’s really quite something. I think-”

“I’m sorry,” Henry cut in, his tone clipped. “Did you want something?”

Alex stared at him.

What the fuck did June and Nora see in this guy?

“Actually,” Alex snapped. “I’d very much like to know what your problem is?”

It was strange, the way Alex’s shift in tone almost made Henry look slightly less uncomfortable. Why in the world would Henry feel safer when Alex wasn’t trying to be nice to him?

“I don’t have a problem,” Henry told him firmly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d like to have something to eat.”

“No, just… Hey. Wait."

There had been more dignified moments in the life of Alex Claremont-Diaz than when he'd stomped after Henry Fox all the way over to that dessert buffet.

“Don’t run away." Unfortunately, Henry ignored Alex in favour of selecting a nice, big cupcake with a generous amount of pink frosting. “Hey. I’m still talking to you.”

Henry barely glanced towards him.

“I’d really like to just be left alone.”

“I’m sure you would,” Alex muttered. He took a deep, steadying breath. “Look. I don’t know what your deal is, or why you think yourself so high above me, but I’d honestly appreciate it if you could tell me what I ever did to you?”

That actually made Henry face him again. His expression was looking unexpectedly complicated, almost like there wasn't a simple answer to Alex's question.

“Alex, you…” Henry began, only to immediately backtrack. “We’ve never even met before, have we? What makes you think that I could have anything to hold against you?”

And, okay. Maybe Alex sort of just lost it, a little bit.

“Seriously?” he spat out. “Do you honestly think that I haven't noticed how you've deliberately avoided me for years?”

That made Henry flinch, his mask of cool indifference slipping for a brief moment. And really, Alex would be lying if he claimed he didn't find that immensely satisfying.

“Calm down,” Henry said flatly. “I don’t even know you. Could you just… Just go away. Please.”

“Fucking _make me.”_ Alex glared at Henry. His heart was racing a mile a minute. “Unless your pretentious ass is too dignified to show all these posh people what you really think of me?”

Suddenly, something like actual anger flared in Henry’s eyes.

“What I think of you,” Henry repeated slowly. His tone had turned dangerously quiet. “Think you know something about that, Alex?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Alex crossed his arms. “You despise me. You think yourself so far above me, I’m not even worthy of a second of your time. You’ve resented me ever since you first found out I existed, and you’ve certainly done more than enough to make sure I know _exactly_ how little you fucking-”

If there was one thing Alex didn’t expect from the stiff, stuck-up Henry Fox, it was to be interrupted mid-sentence by Henry smearing a generous amount of cupcake frosting quite methodically across the front of Alex's shirt.

“That enough to make you go away?” Henry spat out.

Alex stared at him. He looked down at his shirt. Then he looked back up at Henry.

He would never have put _this_ on his cancer research fundraiser bingo card.

A moment later, Henry’s eyes widened in a way that suggested he'd calmed down enough to realize what he had just done. Immediately, Henry just… Bolted. He was out the door in less than five seconds.

Alex had truly thought that would be the first and last time he ever met the elusive Henry Fox.

He has known, immediately, that the pictures and the videos would make the rounds on the internet. Still, Alex could never have predicted the onslaught of speculation that would ensue regarding the true inspiration for the vicious Alexander Cadwell.

Obviously, Alex was familiar with Cadwell's storyline. He had read about the loathsome man many times. Just like Henry's other readers, he'd appreciated Cadwell as a good villain, and had quite enjoyed despising him.

Now, though? Now, Alex couldn't think about Cadwell, or about Henry, or even about Rio, without feeling like he was about to be fucking sick.

So it was clearly a very good thing that, during the following three days, Alex didn't actually see Henry at all.

The photoshoot with Rafael Luna went unbelievably well. Alex had never felt more relaxed behind the camera, and that wasn't only because Raf had been so completely at ease in front of it. They'd gotten such good shots, too, the kind of stunning visuals that had June calling them up only moments after they'd dropped the best ones in the group chat. Alex put her on speaker, and he and Nora almost fell over themselves laughing as June rambled for minutes on end about how they'd truly turned the already very attractive senator Rafael Luna into an exquisite, sensual explosion of raw sex appeal, and how the fuck was she supposed to keep her composure when she had to interview him the week after, did they _have to_ show her those fucking previews and could they please send all the rest? It was a time.

They had a couple of less hectic days, after that. It gave Alex time to get started on post production touches on the material they'd shot so far, as well as the chance to put in more than a few hours on his online coursework. They were doing a whole block on black and white photography, right now, and Alex was kind of actually enjoying it. To think that the pretentious photography course he'd signed himself up for just to prove some sort of point was turning out to be both alarmingly interesting and extremely useful.

When Alex strolled into the kitchen for a glass of water, one late evening, he had almost managed to make himself forget that he and Henry Fox were even on the same continent. 

Finding Henry perched up on a kitchen counter with a large, steaming mug in his hands made Alex stop dead in his tracks.

Henry met his gaze evenly. He looked calmer, compared to their past encounters, but there was something about the clouded look in his eyes that also made him appear a tad bit more exhausted than before. Alex frowned. Wouldn't most people be significantly more energetic three days after a transatlantic flight, compared to hours after getting through customs?

Still, it wasn't like any of that actually mattered.

Alex resolutely turned on his heels and walked right out of the kitchen.

The next time Alex saw Henry was only a day later, also in the kitchen but much later at night. You could even have made a convincing argument that it was early in the morning. Alex had woken up from a restless sleep around three, and had maybe spent a little more than an hour experimenting with the shutter speed for low light photos before venturing out into the kitchen for something (honestly, anything) highly caffeinated.

The sight of Henry made him stop, once again. But not for the same reason as last time.

Henry was seated at the kitchen table. He had a myriad of papers spread out in front of him in a very disorganized mess. A few pages had even slipped off the table and formed something of a heap around his feet. Henry was frowning at the page he currently held up in front of him in what seemed like frustrated concentration, as though that specific sheet of paper had personally offended him. The few, short paragraphs of text on that page were covered in so much highlighter, there was barely a single word that wasn't coloured.

Alex found himself raising an eyebrow.

It wasn't that the scene before him made him curious. Not exactly.

After a moment, Henry looked up. His focused expression quickly dissolved into one of urgent distress. Immediately, he started to shuffle the papers closest to him into something that resembled a pile.

And, okay. That _did_ make Alex curious.

"What are you doing?"

Henry didn't pause his movements. If anything, his attempt to collect his mess of pages became a little more frantic.

"Nothing. Nothing that concerns you."

Alex leaned back against the closest counter and crossed his arms. What if he just took a single step forward and snatched a page right out of Henry's hands? What might Henry's cautious expression shift into, if he did?

He tilted his head a little bit to the left. It was actually quite strange, to see Henry so clearly, unquestionably anxious.

"You know, it doesn't look like nothing," Alex prodded after a beat. "New writing project?"

For whatever reason, that made Henry glance briefly towards Alex.

"Not exactly."

Alex frowned.

"Nora said you'd be writing."

"I'm supposed to be." Henry met Alex's gaze again, held it a little longer, this time. Alex was disappointed to see that the look in Henry's eyes had returned to that familiar state of careful composure. "Might be easier, if _someone_ would only stop bothering me."

And, well. That didn't make Alex want to give Henry a whole lot of peace and quiet, exactly.

"So, what are you writing?"

Henry's movements stilled. His shoulders shifted, just a little. It was like the usual tightness in Henry's posture had given way to some form of reluctant dejection. Like Henry had suddenly recalled just how little the outcome of this conversation actually meant to him.

Alex watched closely as Henry shrugged.

"I'm rewriting the sequel to What Happens In Rio."

It could be said that Alex's heart did something of a somersault.

"You're _what?"_

Henry rolled his eyes.

"I'm rewriting the sequel to What Happens-"

"Heard you the first time," Alex snapped. "Just… Isn't that going to be released in-"

"In only a few months, yes." Henry's brows furrowed. "Not that it's any of your business."

"But then…" Alex uncrossed his arms, only to cross them again. He felt strangely unsettled. "Sounds extremely stupid, to be rewriting this late. Why would you do that?"

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Henry fixed Alex with a stare that was anything but composed. The look in his eyes was ice cold.

"Why do you _think?"_

Alex flinched.

Oh.

For a brief moment, he tried to let himself think about all of this from Henry's perspective. The cupcake disaster. Those indignant tweets. The viral gifs, and the rabid speculation, and those vultures from the tabloids churning out articles like they were getting off on it.

Ever since cupcake gate, Alex had assumed that Henry's only course of action had been to let Windsor Publishing put out a pathetically weak statement, only to have it redacted less than a week later.

Apparently, he'd been somewhat wrong.

Something about Alex's startled expression must have gotten to Henry – he looked away, abruptly.

"I really need to get this done." Henry was addressing the haphazard pile of papers in front of him. He spoke through gritted teeth. "So, could you just… Just leave me alone. Now."

The thing was, Alex had never possessed any particular talent for doing what he was told.

"Can I read it?" he asked impulsively.

He _wanted_ to, was the thing. And given that, less than a week earlier, Alex had been one hundred percent certain he'd never have any interest in Henry's writing again, it was actually weirdly relieving.

Immediately, Henry's expression darkened.

"No, Alex, you don't get to _read it."_ Henry's tone was quietly furious. "What's wrong with you? Do you not understand plain English? Just – just go. Get out of my sight."

Right.

"Fine." Alex glared at Henry. He only barely resisted the urge to knock that stupid pile of papers right off the table on his way out. "Whatever. Be that way."

The next day, Nora kept glancing over at Alex with a quizzical look in her eyes. She didn't say anything, though. Which meant that Alex didn't get any intel on what Henry might or might not have told her regarding his and Alex's latest rendezvous.

Not that it mattered. None of it fucking mattered.

At least not until around midnight, that same night.

For once, Alex actually became aware of Henry's presence in the kitchen before he entered. Henry was speaking in a hushed tone, pausing every so often to listen. Must be on the phone. Alex hesitated outside the open door. He honestly really wanted something to drink, but he didn't exactly love the idea of having another run-in with Henry. Then again, if Henry was talking to someone else, maybe Alex could just quickly slip in and-

"No, I can't. Bea, you _know_ I can't. I know they'd never love me the same way."

Fuck.

Was Henry actually crying?

"No, you're not wrong, I just… I'm never going to be strong enough to-"

Suddenly, there was a loud, clinking sound that sounded a lot like porcelain, followed by something of a splash and the rustling of papers. Henry swore under his breath.

"I'll call you back."

Before he'd really even thought about it, Alex stepped resolutely into the kitchen. 

Henry was staring dejectedly at a mess of damp pages and spilt tea on the table before him. He barely even glanced in Alex's direction.

And, alright. Henry had definitely been crying.

"Well." Alex shifted his feet. He felt surprisingly out of his depth. "We've really got to stop meeting like this."

"Alex, I can't do this right now." It probably said something, that it didn't even bother Alex how Henry wasn't facing him properly when he spoke. "I'm not… Could you just go."

The _please_ was unspoken.

A week or so earlier, Alex might actually have found a certain amount of pleasure in seeing Henry Fox so completely miserable.

"In a second." Alex bravely took a step forward. This might backfire entirely, but it wasn't like there was any kind of connection to be ruined between them, anyhow. "I think some of these might be salvageable."

"No, wait. Don't." Henry quickly pulled his damp pages just out of Alex's reach. He still wasn't looking at Alex. "This is private."

"That's fair," Alex acknowledged carefully.

Because honestly, it was.

He picked up Henry's empty mug, instead, and took it over to the sink. On his way there, he grabbed a box of paper towels and set it on the table for Henry.

Alex started to rinse off the mug. After a moment, he heard Henry reach for the paper towels.

The thing was, Alex didn't like to think of himself as a complete asshole. Sure, he wasn't beyond standing up for himself and his friends when the situation called for it, but he wasn't going to keep kicking at someone who had so very clearly reached some sort of rock bottom. Whatever Henry's intentions had been through this whole mess, the world seemed to have punished him quite enough.

There was still hot water in the pot on the stove. Without thinking too hard about it, Alex put a new teabag in the mug and poured. He added two sugar cubes and just a little bit of milk.

Henry's expression was a strange mixture of apprehension and curiosity when Alex carefully set the mug back down on the table.

Alex quickly stepped back. He leaned against a counter.

He didn't cross his arms.

"Think you can save any of that?"

He nodded towards the pages Henry had carefully hung over the back of a chair.

Henry grimaced.

"It's just printouts of a few scenes. And it's all shit, anyway."

"I find that very hard to believe."

Henry frowned.

And, okay. Henry clearly hadn't earned the right to know just how much his writing meant to Alex. Maybe he never would.

But that didn't mean they needed to be at each other's throats for the rest of Henry's stay.

"Look," Alex began slowly. "I obviously don't know what you're going through right now, or what your problem with me is, but I have to be here for work, and apparently, you're not going anywhere. So, maybe we could just agree to tolerate one another for a while. Okay? You don't have to be my best friend or anything, and I promise you will never have to see me again, after."

Henry was watching Alex closely while he spoke. It was more than a little bit unsettling.

"Sure." Still, Henry sounded hesitant. "If… If that's the way this has to be."

Alex frowned.

"Why would it be any other way?"

"No, you're right. It wouldn't." Henry looked away for a moment. "I'll try my best to be, you know. Nice.”

That actually made Alex smile.

"Nice would be a treat," he offered. "Honestly, I'd be more than willing to settle for civil."

Surprisingly, a small smile tugged at Henry's lips, too.

"Well. I might even consider giving friendly a shot."

Alex grinned. Were they trading jokes, now? How on earth.

"No, you mustn't," he implored, mock-seriously. "The shock would be too great. You've really got to be quite careful, here."

Henry tilted his head a little bit to the left.

"Yeah. I really do, don't I."

There was something about Henry's suddenly quiet tone that Alex couldn't quite place.

Well. Not that it mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex – so smart, yet so oblivious – an _irresistible_ combination, according to one Henry Fox.
> 
> The point of views!! Are shifting!! Next time, we'll be back with Henry, who isn't entirely sure if his whole rewrite-crisis has just gotten _better,_ or significantly worse. Or both? Well. Both _is_ an option.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your responses to the first chapter, I'm so glad you're as excited about this as I am! ♡♡♡


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to Bea ([take_me_out_baby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/take_me_out_baby/pseuds/take_me_out_baby)) for beta reading this chapter! ♡

"So," Nora said, somewhat carefully. "Let's say, on a scale from one to ten... How mad are you at me, approximately?"

They were sitting in Henry's room, down in the basement. Nora had a warm cup of cocoa in her hands and was curled up comfortably in a green velvet armchair. Henry sat cross legged on his bed, his laptop balanced precariously on his knees. He was skimming through a scene he'd tried to work on a few days earlier – unfortunately, he found himself grimacing and wincing with an alarming frequency. It was, truly, shit.

On Henry's bedside table stood a large cup of tea. And, well. It wasn’t just _any_ cup of tea. Because somehow, it was yet another cup of tea with the precise amount of milk and sugar that Henry prefered, courtesy of one Alex Claremont-Diaz.

Henry was starting to feel like things might have been a lot simpler if he’d only had the strength to outright refuse that very first cup of tea Alex had for some reason offered him, last night. But, well. He hadn’t. And surprisingly, Alex had just... Kept at it. He had wordlessly refilled Henry’s cup that same morning, at around four or maybe five when Henry most certainly hadn't expected Alex to make another kitchen cameo, and then just half an hour earlier, when Henry had ventured back into the kitchen for something to eat after sleeping through most of the day, Alex had inexplicably popped in for no other apparent reason than to repeat the gesture.

Henry allowed himself to take another sip of this most recent cup of tea. It was actually absolute bloody _perfection,_ was the thing. Completely according to his preferences. And the fact that Alex had somehow figured that out, and had for some incomprehensible reason made it his mission to keep providing Henry with his favourite warm beverage… It felt, well. Oddly complicated.

Then again, the fact of the matter was that literally _everything_ about Alexander was exceedingly complicated at the moment, on and off the page.

“It’s got to be at least a six. Right?”

Henry looked up from his laptop. Right. Nora had asked him a question. And actually, although the tone of Nora’s voice had been quite steady, there was something decidedly weary about the way she was searching Henry's eyes for the answer.

“Well.” Henry offered her a small, hopefully comforting smile. “I think I’m mad at you a perfectly reasonable amount.”

Nora tilted her head a little to the left. Ah. She actually, genuinely needed him to give her a number. Of course she did.

“A six, maximum,” Henry decided after another moment's contemplation. “If we’re talking right here, right now and not, you know. A week ago."

Nora nodded, sort of solemnly.

"Better than I expected," she said lightly. "You know, Alex was at a solid nine."

Quickly, Henry let his gaze shift back down to his laptop.

It probably shouldn't hurt as much as it did, to learn precisely how much Alex detested having Henry in the same building. Really, it wasn't like Henry had much of a reason to be surprised.

Impulsively, he reached for his cup of tea again.

“Well. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you Alex would be here.” Nora smiled, sort of gently. It wasn’t a type of smile that Henry could really say was on brand for her. “I can’t truthfully claim that I regret it, exactly. But I am sorry.”

“It’s… Well. It’s not alright, precisely.” Henry managed another smile of his own. If he was completely honest with himself, Nora was actually _very_ lucky that Henry had grown quite irreversibly fond of her so long before she had decided to lure him all the way to Texas on entirely false premises. “But it is what it is. And I guess you knew perfectly well that I would never have come, if you had told me the whole truth.”

For some reason, that made Nora raise both of her eyebrows, her expression turning rather contemplative. And, well. That was certainly a lot more in character than all of those alarmingly gentle smiles from before. Somehow, this familiarly calculating version of Nora felt much more reassuring, comparatively.

“Well,” Nora said slowly. “You wouldn’t have come, hm? Tell me, Henry. Is that why you packed your bags and got your ass out of here the very moment you realized that Alex would be staying here, too?”

Henry let his gaze drop to the floor.

He hated to admit that Nora had a point, but… Well. She always did. And Henry genuinely had no idea how to explain this particular conundrum to her, possibly because he hadn’t found a way of rationalizing it all to himself yet. Because _why_ would he choose this? Why would he willingly remain a guest in a house that was currently inhabited by Alexander, too? By the very person who was, arguably, responsible for every single one of Henry’s present misfortunes?

Well. There was kind of only one possible answer to that question.

Except, it couldn’t be that. It _couldn’t_ be. Because that was something that Henry had never once dared to allow himself to genuinely hope for. And really, what kind of an utter fool would he be if he decided that _now_ was the time to break that strict set of rules he had once set for himself, when it seemed less likely than ever before that Alexander would ever… That Alex could ever look at Henry and feel anything other than anger, and resentment, and-

“Oh, Henry,” Nora said softly.

Henry bit his lip.

It would honestly have been so much easier, if Nora could just have been properly angry at Henry. If she could have just yelled at him, or if she’d been unmistakably disappointed, or if she could at least have taken to her usual habit of relentless ribbing. All of this excessive thoughtfulness was starting to make Henry feel quite nauseous. Because it wasn’t something that he had deserved, was it? Certainly not from Nora, of all people. Sure, they were good friends, and Nora was possibly trying to compensate quite a bit for her recent deception, but ultimately, Nora was always going to be Alex’s friend, first and foremost. God, she was Alex’s _best_ friend, wasn’t she? Alex, who Henry had somehow ended up hurting so thoroughly, so mercilessly, despite his best intentions. Alex, who could still barely look at Henry without his expression shifting into one of tense discomfort, but who had for some inexplicable reason gone out of his way to repeatedly offer Henry a deceptively perfect cup of tea. Alexander, ever confusing, always immeasurably, devastatingly perfect.

Henry stared down at the open document on his laptop, his mind spinning. God. He just needed to find some way to actually make himself _write._

“You don’t need to justify yourself to me, you know.” Thankfully, Nora’s voice was a little less soft, now. A little more impatient. Good. Henry would gladly take impatience over compassion. Impatience made _sense._ “And I… I’m really, really glad you’ve stayed. And honestly, I’m going to choose to be tentatively optimistic about the fact that you and Alex aren’t constantly getting into arguments with each other. Not that you’re actually even talking, but, you know. The not fighting is a pretty good start.”

Henry kept his expression carefully neutral.

“Yeah. I guess that counts as a surprise.”

“Oh, I’m not exactly surprised.” Nora actually grinned for a second. “You know, I’ve always had this feeling that you and Alex could be pretty great friends.”

Henry raised both eyebrows slowly.

“And how’s that theory working out, so far?”

“I guess the odds have been better,” Nora admitted. Still, she sounded strangely hopeful. “But I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Alex is such a great person, Henry. I just wish you could know him like I do.”

Henry cleared his throat lightly.

“Could you, um. I think I’m just gonna try to get some work done. If that’s okay.”

“Oh, of course. Of course.” Nora readily stood up. Unfortunately, she offered Henry another unbearably kind smile. “You know, I still wish you would just tell me what it is that you’re writing, and why it’s giving you so much trouble? Or if you would at least tell June? I’m sure she’d be happy to help you.”

“This is kind of… Personal.” Henry looked back down at his document. “I, uh. I’ll let June know if I have something I want her to take a look at.”

“Do that,” Nora encouraged him. “We’re both here for you, Henry. You know that, right? I truly believe that you can do this. Whatever it is.”

“Sure.” Henry managed a shaky breath. His smile was feeble. “Thank you, Nora.”

Nora nodded towards him once more, before she quietly headed back up the stairs.

Henry set his laptop to the side. He tried to take another calming sip of tea, only to realize his mug was now empty. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply in and out, in and out.

Then he got to his feet, and slowly made his way up the stairs.

The kitchen wasn’t empty.

Henry hesitated briefly in the doorway.

He had never come across Alex sitting at the kitchen table before. It took a moment before Alex seemed to notice that Henry was there – whatever Alex had opened on his laptop, it must’ve been something pretty intriguing. After a few seconds, Alex did look up.

A moment passed.

Then, inexplicably, Alex almost smiled.

Henry nearly turned around on the spot.

“Hey.” Christ, Alex’s tone was actually sort of… Polite? Maybe even pleasant? Shit, shit, _shit. “_ You consume a lot of tea.”

“I’m British,” Henry reminded him unsurely. For some reason, his feet had yet to carry him back down to the basement. “It’s a thing.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Alex got up and busied himself with the pot of water – oh no, he was doing it again. Henry should leave. He should just bloody _leave._ “You can come in, you know.”

Slowly, Henry stepped inside the kitchen. He set his mug down on the counter.

“You know,” he said quietly. “You really don’t need to-”

“Shut up. I want to.” Alex kept his gaze fixed on the pot of water. It was a little unsettling, how he suddenly seemed to have trouble meeting Henry’s eyes. “Don’t overthink it. It’s just tea.”

“Sure,” Henry agreed quickly, despite the fact that he couldn’t agree less. There was no such thing as _just_ tea. “Sure. Of course.”

Alex glanced at him briefly, with a flash of unexplainable, undeniable curiosity. Yet another thing that Henry had no idea how to make any sense of whatsoever.

“So...” Alex continued lightly. “How’s writing?”

Henry shrugged.

Something that wasn’t _not_ a smile tugged at Alex’s lips.

“That bad, huh?”

“I mean…” Henry began, only to fall silent.

He had no idea how to finish that sentence. This wasn’t a conversation he was prepared to have with anybody, just yet, but least of all with Alex himself. 

“Bet you’re overthinking something.” Alex reached for Henry’s mug. He put in a bag of tea and carefully poured the water, before opening the fridge for milk. “It’s just words, isn’t it? How hard can it be?”

Henry rolled his eyes.

“Words, right. Thanks for your truly invaluable advice.”

Alex ducked his head and, for a brief moment, he actually smiled. God, he was so beautiful.

Henry only wished he had the strength to look away.

“There must be _something_ that's been known to inspire you,” Alex went on. He carefully stirred two sugar cubes into Henry's mug. “Something that gets you churning out words on paper like that’s all you’ve ever… Hey. What’s so funny?”

It wasn’t quite rational, probably, how Henry suddenly found himself biting back a grin of his own. God, this whole situation was ridiculous. _Henry_ was ridiculous, or at least ridiculously tired. He needed to get out of there. He needed Alexander to be closer, or much further away – one or the other, definitely. He needed so, _so_ many things at once, it wasn't even funny.

Their fingers brushed, very briefly, when Alex handed Henry his freshly brewed cup of tea.

“You’re weird,” Alex decided. He was frowning slightly – except, it wasn’t the bitter grimace that Henry had been faced with when he’d first arrived at the lake house. No, this frown seemed much more contemplative and, well... Alarmingly intrigued. “Go write something. Words are your thing, aren’t they? How hard can it be?”

Henry couldn’t help it – he actually laughed. God, he was so, so _tired._

“You’re laughing _at_ me, I believe,” Alex observed – and, really, he had no reason to sound so tentatively pleased about that. He shouldn’t have much reason to sound pleased at all, as far as Henry knew. “I’m going to choose not to be offended by that until after you’ve left. I’ll send you a card.”

“And you’re calling _me_ weird,” Henry countered lamely.

He was kind of actually still smiling, which was something he’d done very little of this past week. It felt… Good. God, it felt _too_ good. Henry swallowed. This was exactly why he’d been so careful to stay far away from Alexander, all those years. He had always known that he'd be too weak not to give into temptation.

Henry cleared his throat.

“Hey. Could I maybe… I mean, so as long as I’m not bothering you, would it be okay if I just… Got my laptop and, you know, I’d just need a corner of the table-”

“I’ve never met anyone who overthinks as much as you do, you know,” Alex cut in, actually sort of amiably. He looked… Almost pleased. Which was kind of _certifiably_ weird. “Sure. Why not?”

Henry blinked.

“Alright. Okay. Uh, thank you.”

“Overthinking,” Alex reminded him cheerfully. He got himself a glass of water, then returned to his spot at the kitchen table. “If you want to sit at the other end of this table and, you know, type words that you think are complete shit, then be my guest.”

“Okay,” Henry said. And then he completely failed to bite back one brief, tentative smile. “Alright. Good.”

Soon, he’d gone down to his room and collected his laptop and his printed draft and his highlighters and what was left of his dignity, and had taken a seat at the other end of the table, just as Alex had described. The very seat that was as far away from Alex as possible, yet still closer to Alex than Henry had ever before been out of choice.

Henry allowed himself one more glance towards Alex, who was once again quite endearingly focused on his own work, before his gaze settled back down on his own laptop screen.

Impulsively, Henry opened a blank document.

He didn’t look up for the next three hours.

By the time he pushed his laptop back and rubbed at his eyes, his tea had gone cold and his back sort of hurt more than a little bit.

He’d written… A lot. He’d written more than he had managed to do during that entire _week._

When Henry looked up, he realized with a start that Alex was still there. And, well. Alex didn’t seem quite so preoccupied with his own laptop, anymore.

Instead, Alex was kind of … Watching Henry. Huh.

How long had that been going on, exactly?

“You know, I’ve spoken to you twice,” Alex informed him. He sounded fascinated. “You didn’t seem to hear me.”

“I’m sorry, I-”

Alex waved a hand in dismissal.

“Are you always like this, when you write?”

There it was again, that frighteningly genuine curiosity. Quickly, Henry looked away.

“Yeah.” he cleared his throat. “Sure.”

It wasn’t quite the truth.

Henry scrolled back up in his document, pausing to linger at certain paragraphs and expressions. It was, oh God. It actually looked like something that could, after some serious editing, become something… Pretty great? Actually _extremely_ bloody great. Jesus.

It had been an entirely spontaneous decision to start writing the narrative in the form of unanswered letters. It had just felt right, somehow. Like the correct way to start exploring Alexander Cadwell properly, by listening to that character’s voice, to what it was that he had to say, what he wanted, what he _truly_ yearned for. And a series of letters should actually be entirely possible to mix in with the existing draft of Waterloo. Like a secondary narrative, kind of? Maybe. If Henry actually managed to tie it all together, somehow.

Except... Henry skimmed another page, and found himself smiling at what he found, at what he had somehow just willed into existence. It was rough, sure, but so rich with emotion and want, with desperation and despair. It was the voice of someone in agony, of someone who was writing and writing and _writing,_ someone who was processing all of the things he’d gone through and finally daring to ask for understanding and forgiveness and help, someone who was reaching out again and _again_ without as much as a word back, yet who still kept at it, who just couldn’t let his feelings remain hidden in the shadows any longer.

And as rough as it was, Henry still felt a familiar tingle as he skimmed his way through the last few pages. This was _something._ Something with potential. Something that might even end up reducing the entire existing narrative of _From Waterloo With Love,_ the work that Henry still felt proudest of out of all of his novels, into nothing but a mediocre background noise.

God, Henry didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have the time to develop this into what it truly deserved to be.

Shaan was going to _kill_ him.

Maybe, Henry thought hysterically, this was actually going to be the very thing that caused him to fuck his entire bloody career over. Not the cupcake fight, or those tweets, or everything else that had happened since. No, this extraordinarily risky creative decision suddenly had the potential to upstage all of that completely. He could see the headlines already – _Acclaimed Writer Henry Fox back with Potentially Interesting yet Undeniably Unfinished Sequel. “Well, only an idiot would publish that,” Critics say. More on pages four, five and six._

Henry sighed.

“That bad?” Alex quipped.

Right. Alex was still watching Henry.

“It’s kind of… The other way around.” Henry grimaced. “It’s too good.”

“Right. Because that’s definitely a thing that makes sense.” Alex smiled, easily this time. Henry’s heart fluttered helplessly. “I’m truly sorry that’s happened to you.”

Henry decidedly didn’t smile.

“Not your fault, I don’t think,” he pointed out, his tone light. “None of this is.”

And, well. A week ago, Henry could have made a very convincing argument that much of this was, in fact, entirely Alex’s fault. _Henry_ had certainly never intended for things to end up this way, and even though he might have worsened an already bad cupcake situation at that fundraiser, he’d never have dreamed that it would all come to this in the end. Yet for some reason, Henry couldn’t quite find it in himself to keep blaming Alex for this whole mess.

Not anymore.

Alex was _still_ watching him. Jesus. There were actually a lot of things about Alex that weren’t as they initially had been, weren’t there?

“Your tea’s gone cold,” Alex observed.

It took Henry a moment to realize that Alex meant that as a question.

And God, Henry was weak. Henry was so _weak._ Because what good could ever come of this frighteningly fragile truce between them? It wasn’t like the two of them were even close to being friends. Like they ever could be, after all that had happened.

Henry met Alex's eyes.

He nodded.

Alex got up. He put on another pot of water.

Henry breathed deeply, in and out. Then he shifted his gaze back to his laptop, and continued to type.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so excited to be back with an update of this!!
> 
> I've taken a good look at my outline and restructured stuff a bit, which means that the coming chapters should be slightly shorter and instead more frequent. and as for the point of view changing back and forth in some sort of predictable pattern? let's just say that's _so_ 2020\. next up: we find out more about Alex and Nora's photography project!
> 
> thank you all so much for your response to this so far!! it's so fun reading all of your reactions! ♡


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge thanks to [failing_at_fangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failing_at_fangirling/pseuds/failing_at_fangirling) for beta reading this chapter!!! ♡

The two of them settled into an oddly comfortable routine after that. Henry still slept through most of the day and wrote furiously all through the night, but now he often found himself doing so in the kitchen with the quiet company of one Alex Claremont-Diaz.

Or, well. _Mostly_ quiet.

Or rather, less and _less_ quiet.

“Got any other hobbies?”

Henry looked up from his screen.

“Not really.” He frowned. “And this isn’t a hobby.”

“So basically, you’re literally no fun.” Alex grinned. “Got it.”

Henry rolled his eyes. He didn’t feel at all annoyed.

“Who’s your favourite author?”

Henry blinked, looking up in a daze. It was, what, two hours later? Maybe even three.

“I’m not sure if I have just one.”

“Sure you do.” Alex rested his head on his chin. “Isn’t that kind of required? In your profession, I mean.”

“Not precisely.” Henry licked his lips. “I’ve always quite enjoyed Charles Dickens.”

“Come on, that’s just the one they keep putting in your bio.” Alex’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no way you’ve actually reread Great Expectations for _fun.”_

“How would you even know that’s not my-”

“No overthinking,” Alex added quickly. He grinned, almost playfully. “Just answer the question. Who’s your favourite author that you genuinely enjoy?”

Henry bit his lower lip. “I guess… Jane Austen.”

“Huh.” Alex nodded slowly. His expression was one of vague approval. “Fair enough.”

“What about you?” Henry wondered curiously.

Alex’s smile widened slightly. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I, er. I would, actually.” Henry felt a little unsettled as Alex’s smile only widened more. “Come on. I told you mine, didn’t I?”

“You absolutely did,” Alex teased, and oh God, that smile was so utterly, completely devastating. “Still, I never actually said that I’d-”

“Shush,” Henry muttered. His eyes were back on his screen, his fingers already dancing across his keyboard. “Just, wait. I need to get this down.”

 _His smile, ever devastating,_ he typed with shaking hands. _His heart, never to be mine. My every heartbeat, forsaken, for nothing. All for him._

Henry kept typing, and typing, and typing, the words almost coming to him faster than he could get them down.

The next time he looked up, he couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Alex had left the kitchen. Henry’s mug of tea had been refilled.

It was another late night – or really, more of an early morning (seriously, when in the world did Alexander _sleep?)_ – that Henry happened to catch a glimpse of the content on Alex’s laptop screen. And, well. Henry froze. Because really, he hadn’t expected Alex’s open photoshop project to contain quite so many vivid photographs of a _very_ naked man.

Alex, who was over by the counter, making himself a cup of coffee and Henry another cup of tea, looked up.

“Oh,” he said loftily. “Yeah. I’m pretty happy with those.”

Henry blinked. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes away from Alex’s laptop even though he probably should. The image that had caught his eye the most showed the man from the side, turned slightly away from the camera with his back enticingly arched, and _God,_ was that some sort of sheer fabric wrapped around his waist, almost like an illusion of a skirt? Jesus. The images were stunning in an artistic way that Henry had long since come to associate with Alex’s photographs, but more importantly they all looked sensual and flirtatious and so fucking _sexy,_ like a thirst trap designed for the sole purpose of making Henry accidentally expose his attraction to men in front of the very last person he ought to share that information with.

He definitely should’ve looked away by now – actually, he should’ve just kept his eyes to himself to begin with. God. Maybe he could somehow come up with an excuse to leave the room before Alex took one look at his face and inevitably put two and two together.

“It’s part of mine and Nora’s project.” Alex seemed unfairly relaxed as he set Henry’s cup of tea down on the table. He even turned the laptop around a little, so that Henry could get a better look. Oh _no._ “I’m sure Nora’s told you all about it.”

Finally, _finally,_ Henry managed to tear his eyes away so he could face Alex. Some part of his inner turmoil must have shown on his face. Alex frowned.

“Did Nora… Not tell you?”

Henry shook his head carefully.

“We mostly talk about, um.” _About you. Always about you._ “About other things. What, er. What are you doing?”

Slowly, Alex started to grin. Oh, no. That was a very, very foreboding sort of grin. “Well. What does it _look_ like we’re doing?”

Henry flicked his gaze back down to Alex’s laptop. Jesus. Was he really going to have to put it into words?

“I mean.” Henry cleared his throat. “I’m getting the impression of… Artistic nudes? With, um. With a man wearing some sort of... Not-quite dress?”

“You can say soft porn. It’s okay.” Alex’s grin widened. “See, Vogue reached out to me about this upcoming issue they wanted to do on toxic masculinity and sexual empowerment. Which was basically a very thinly veiled commission for some high quality... Let’s go with artistic nudes, for propriety’s sake.”

“And you agreed?” Henry wondered faintly.

Alex tilted his head, pausing for a second. His expression had turned the slightest bit apprehensive. “After some consideration, yes. Is that so unexpected?”

“Well, it’s... You know.” Henry gestured awkwardly towards Alex’s laptop screen. “Toxic masculinity, that’s not exactly a new or revolutionary subject matter. And, um, the whole idea of men dressed up in skirts for some sort of gender masquerade, that’s a bit… I mean, in some ways, that’s a pretty delicate matter? If you consider a trans male perspective.”

Surprisingly, that made Alex smile.

“Sure,” he agreed easily. “It’s neither new nor revolutionary, and the whole crossdressing aspect is genuinely somewhat exploitive – just the fact that, even in this day and age, the very idea of a man in a dress is basically going to guarantee Vogue a whole lot of clicks. It’s disheartening, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Henry agreed, relieved that he seemed to have gotten his point across. “Yes, exactly. _Why_ are you doing it?”

Alex grinned again. He closed a couple of windows on his laptop and pulled up another image, instead. It was a shot that must have been taken down by the lake, featuring a practically naked, outrageously attractive man with dark hair and brown eyes. He was holding a sheer, pink shawl loosely behind himself in a way that frankly did _nothing_ to shield his absolutely perfect ass from view. He had his head turned over his shoulder, a lazy smile aimed towards the camera, those gorgeous eyes glinting with playful mischief as well as something several degrees more sensual.

Henry didn’t even try to make himself look away this time. Not from _that_ image. God. He was going to die, wasn’t he? He felt just about ready to die, right there and then. And oh, what a perfectly wonderful, utterly gay death that would have been.

“This,” Alex said, his voice sounding far away, “Is Senator Rafael Luna.”

It took Henry at least five seconds before he had quite made sense of what Alex had just said.

“Oh,” Henry managed shakily. “That’s… That’s really something.”

“It is,” Alex agreed. Henry finally made an effort to tear away his gaze from the screen so he could watch Alex’s animated expression, instead. “And the thing is, Raf is currently pushing for a bill that’s going to increase funding for support programs focused on victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.”

“... Oh,” Henry repeated. He felt surprised. “Really?”

“Really.” Alex nodded eagerly. “The Special Victims Protection Act. It’s being voted on in the Senate on the 31st, next month, which just so happens to be shortly after Vogue’s scheduled publication of our issue. And that issue is going to feature exactly thirty-one famous, successful men, all photographed in the nude and interviewed about their thoughts on toxic masculinity and sexual violence, and the responsibility men have to carry this conversation, and of course this upcoming opportunity to make actual, legislative change. Thirty-one voices for the vote on the thirty-first.”

“Huh.” Henry allowed himself a brief glance back down at Alex’s laptop screen. The picture was still objectively scandalous, but with the context in mind nothing about it seemed even the slightest bit tacky or exploitive. “Alex, that’s… That’s huge.”

“Huge is what we’re aiming for.” Finally, mercifully, Alex turned his laptop back around. “I’m taking the pictures, obviously, and Nora is in charge of outreach and social media optimization. She’s going to play those algorithms like a fiddle. June is conducting all the interviews, and we've all exhausted our personal connections to put together our cast of models. It's a really diverse group – we've got different ethnicities, and ages, and both trans and cis guys – and their professions range from musicians to CEOs to an NHL hockey captain."

“That’s really cool,” Henry said. He meant it. “You know, that could truly have a serious impact.”

“We hope so.” Alex tilted his head a little bit again. For some reason, he grinned playfully. “But yes, to answer your initial question – it is, simply put, artistic nudes.”

“Well.” Henry cleared his throat lightly. He was fairly certain that his cheeks were still somewhat pink after his visceral reaction to the last photograph. Hopefully, Alex just thought he was a bit of a prude or something – an assumption along those lines would’ve been much preferable to the truth. “No shame in that, I don’t think.”

“I’m glad we agree,” Alex quipped pleasantly. “Then I’m sure you will be quite unfazed when I tell you that I’m going to get back in front of the camera for this.”

Henry stared at him. God. Alex with his skin laid bare for the camera and one of those ridiculously sheer fabrics wrapped suggestively around his waist, his head cocked to the side, his lips curled into a deliberately teasing smile… Henry swallowed, his mouth dry.

“We’re hoping it might generate a lot of interest, given that I haven’t modeled at all for several years.” Alex clicked something on his computer, mercifully distracted. “And lots of interest is exactly what we need for this.”

“I, er. I’m sure you’ll get it.” Henry cleared his throat again. His tone was almost steady. “There’s definitely people who will… Who might be very interested to see that.”

Alex looked up. For a second, his smile was almost warm. Except, it soon curved into a sly grin.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” Alex actually winked. Jesus. Shit, _shit._ “Look at us, exchanging casual compliments – it’s almost like we’re actually friends. To think that the real reason we're here together is because you dragged me so thoroughly in your bestseller, and I called you out on it.”

Henry sat up a little straighter.

It surprised him, how easily he recognized the sudden lightness in Alex's tone for the feigned indifference that it was. And, well. There were a lot of Alex-related things that Henry still had no clue how to deal with – he didn't know what to make of all those cups of tea, or how easily Alex made him smile, or the way Henry found himself entirely unable to resist seeking out Alex's company again and again.

But this? Seeing Alex unable to meet Henry's eyes as he tried to play off a frighteningly vulnerable question as some sort of casual joke? This made sense, in some strange, roundabout way, if only because it was the kind of dark, downward spiral that Henry found so achingly familiar.

Henry took a deep, steadying breath.

“Alex,” he began, his voice coming out soft. “No. That’s… No.”

Alex’s grin dimmed slightly.

“That’s not what happened.” Henry allowed himself to look down at his hands. It was difficult enough just to find the right words, to finally speak them out loud. The added pressure of facing Alex was hardly necessary. “Look. I know you might never actually believe this, but my character, Alexander Cadwell? He isn’t based on you. He is genuinely, completely unrelated. I promise. There is no connection whatsoever between you and him.”

Alex didn’t respond immediately. Henry dared a quick glance in his direction, only to find that Alex was watching him intently. His expression was difficult to read.

“Your publisher redacted that statement,” Alex said after a moment. He sounded calm. _Too_ calm.

“They did,” Henry agreed gently. Somehow, he managed to gather enough courage to meet Alex’s eyes briefly. “Because no one believed it. Not because it wasn’t true.”

Alex was quiet for even longer, this time. His gaze was steady, despite the fact that his expression had turned apprehensive in a way that unfortunately couldn’t be a good sign.

“I guess I don’t _not_ believe you,” Alex finally said. Surprisingly, he was the first to break eye contact. He looked… Tired. “And it’s not that I… I mean. I sort of _want_ to believe you, is the thing.”

Oh.

“That’s nice,” Henry admitted quietly.

It was. _God,_ it really was.

Alex's gaze flickered back up again, his expression a little more guarded than before.

“I can give you the benefit of the doubt, at most," he said slowly. "Because I just can’t imagine any other reason for, well. For a lot of things, if I’m honest.”

Henry bit his lip. This was _exactly_ why this was such a stupid idea. Why Henry should never have stayed at the lake house, should never have humoured Alex's many attempts at alarmingly amicable conversation. Was he ever going to have the freedom to speak honestly with Alex about all that had happened, and explain his other, painfully true reason for all of his actions? For everything that had come to pass between them.

“That's alright,” Henry said quietly. “I'm still grateful. I promise I won’t ask you for more than that.”

He wouldn’t. Because he _couldn’t._ Not when Henry had spent so many years carefully steering himself away from that very path, from the danger of allowing his whole world to fall apart just because of his stupidly wonderful, endlessly agonizing love for another man. For this man.

Henry closed his eyes, just briefly. He tried to relax his shoulders, to let go of all of his tension and fear and doubt. He reached for his cup of tea, methodically taking a sip, the movement familiar, comforting. Then he looked back down at his document, set his hands on his keyboard and forced himself to continue to type.

He tried his best not to think about the fact that Alex was still watching him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things aren't quite picture perfect for these boys just yet, but at least they're slowly getting somewhere? next up: Alex gets in front of the camera!
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://everwitch-magiks.tumblr.com/) , feel free to come and say hi! ♡♡♡


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, many many thanks to [failing_at_fangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failing_at_fangirling/pseuds/failing_at_fangirling) for beta reading this chapter!!! ♡

Alex was making a list. He couldn’t quite pinpoint when, exactly, he had started making it. It might’ve been during his very first encounter with Henry in the kitchen, when his emotions had flared high and his thoughts had raced beyond coherency. Or it might’ve been that first time Henry had chosen to actually join him at the table, and Alex had spent the subsequent few hours reluctantly fascinated by the sight of Henry becoming utterly transfixed by his own words. Or it might’ve been long before either of those instances, on a quiet day in early spring a number of years ago when June had chosen to gift Alex a novel, and Alex had first touched his fingertips to that handwritten dedication.

It might not have been any of those times.

The list wasn’t like any of Alex’s other lists. It didn’t have a title, for one, despite Alex’s many attempts to give it one. And for reasons unknown, Alex found himself unable to confine this list to just one place, to one file on his computer or one page in his notebook. It just kept… spilling over. It kept seeping it’s way fucking _ everywhere.  _ It was on the back of receipts, and in vague, intentionally cryptic instagram captions, and always,  _ always  _ in the back of Alex’s mind like an incessant background noise.

There were parts of the list that made Alex feel like he was asking himself questions and other parts that felt like they could, or maybe should, be the answer. Except, no part of the list seemed to be the  _ right  _ answer to those questions. Not really. Which might’ve had something to do with the fact that Alex wasn’t entirely sure which questions he should have been asking himself in the first place.

All Alex knew for sure was the following:

  1. The list was, mostly, about Henry.
  2. The list was a messy mixture of both concrete observations and wild speculation.
  3. Alex had never written a more disorganized list in his life.



Currently, Alex was carefully typing up item number twenty-six in an untitled note on his phone:  _ Henry’s fingers are calloused in strange places, and I can’t tell if it’s from guitar or piano or something else entirely. I think I’d like to know. _

“Why photography?”

Alex nearly flinched. Henry hadn’t looked up—he was still typing, his eyes fixed on his screen in apparent concentration. Alex almost thought that he’d hallucinated Henry asking him a question. Was Henry at all aware of how long Alex had been watching him just then? He couldn’t have been, could he? Not with the way Henry usually became so completely absorbed by his own work. Except tonight, Henry was apparently up to multitasking—he glanced up briefly, his eyebrows raising slightly in undeniable expectation, and somehow, he was  _ still fucking typing _ . Jesus. How?

“I mean, you’re very good at it.” Henry’s eyes had mercifully returned to his screen. He was frowning slightly, presumably at one of the sentences he’d just written. “But a lot of people were surprised when you made that career change.”

Alex swallowed, his mouth dry. Something about Henry’s seemingly effortless inquiry, a startling contrast to his usual brand of carefully guarded conversation and the occasional tight smile, was weirdly fucking unsettling. Inexplicably, Alex needed to reclaim the higher ground.

“Were you surprised?”

Henry looked up. He seemed startled, which Alex counted as a win, but he also managed to rearrange his expression into something like polite curiosity annoyingly fast.

“Sure,” Henry admitted after a moment. He looked back down at his screen. “It really wasn’t something I’d expected.”

“So you were a fan of my work?”

To Alex’s disappointment, Henry seemed less startled this time. It was almost like he had somehow been completely prepared for Alex’s second offensive play. Henry even managed a brief smile.

“Nora and June never shut up about you. Let’s leave it at that.”

And… okay. That was very much in the territory of neither confirming nor denying. Interesting.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Henry pointed out. He was typing again. “You don’t need to, obviously. Not unless you want to.”

Alex paused to actually think about it for a second. “I just don’t think the answer’s very interesting,” he admitted. “It was just... The undeniable fact that I wasn’t going to be nineteen forever.”

Henry frowned. “You’re twenty-seven, I think?”

“Exactly,” Alex said. He grinned. “I’m, you know, super old.”

“Not  _ that  _ old.” Henry seemed to bite back a smile. “Certainly not older than some of us.”

“Maybe so. But twenty-seven is truly ancient, in model years.” Alex shrugged. “And I'd always wanted to plan for a solid fall-back. Something that I could do, after—something that wouldn’t have an expiration date in quite the same way. I really wanted to try for something that was still in the same industry, so I could use everything I'd learned and all of my connections. And it absolutely had to be something that I could plausibly excel at.”

“You do,” Henry said. He had watched Alex quite closely while he spoke—he’d even taken his hands off his keyboard. “Excel at it, that is. It was frightfully annoying when you first announced that you’d purchased a camera and then proceeded to fill your Instagram with all these ridiculously stunning photographs the very next week. Noone should be allowed to get so good at something quite so fast.”

Alex stared at him. “You follow me on Instagram?” he asked carefully.

It shouldn’t really matter, probably. Except, perhaps, for those cryptic Instagram captions that Alex had found himself putting forth into the world, lately. Just that morning, he’d chosen to accompany an image of a steaming breakfast mug with the words  _ 24\. nothing quite like the fragrance of earl grey after a good night’s non-sleep.  _ His followers had bugged him quite a bit about what the  _ fuck  _ was up with Alex’s new tendency to preface his captions with a random number. He hadn’t answered any of them. Had Henry seen that?

“I do.” Henry was still meeting his eyes. “Except I haven’t really been on, lately. On any social media. I may have deleted a ton of apps, right before I came here.”

Ah. Okay. “Well. Anyway. It sort of happened exactly like that. I thought about my options for all of two seconds, got myself a camera and dove right into it. Just to find out if it was something I could see myself doing. Unexpectedly, things took off immediately. I would’ve weighed the pros and cons a lot more if the bar for just trying it out had been higher. Like if I'd decided to get a degree in it, or whatever.”

“Do you think you ever will?” Henry asked. “Uni’s not all bad, you know. You, er. Learn things.”

Alex grinned. “Shocker,” he deadpanned, pleased to see how that got Henry to bite back another smile. “I’d never have guessed.”

“Too cool for school, huh?”

“Not exactly.” Alex paused. “June keeps bugging me about it. Says I could continue to work parallel, and what not. How I’ve got the potential to do more. But it’s hard to see what more I could or should do when I’m already doing exactly what I want. When I’ve already got things figured out.”

“I get that.” Henry nodded slowly. “I got my first book deal my second year. And it wasn’t… I mean. The initial money from that wasn’t anywhere near enough to live on. But it was still that much harder to be motivated in my classes. They just didn’t seem real, in the same way.”

“Says you, who graduated from Oxford with a fucking first class degree.” Alex grinned. “Must’ve found that motivation one way or another.”

Henry stared at him. It took Alex a moment to realize why that might be.

Quickly, Alex looked away. He grasped for a change of subject.

“I’m actually halfway through an online photography course, right now. I basically signed up for it to get June to shut up for half a second, but it’s… it’s pretty cool. I'm learning things.”

“That’s good.” Henry’s tone was strangely distant. Alex allowed himself a quick glance in Henry’s direction, and found that Henry’s eyes were once again fixed quite firmly on his laptop. He was typing rapidly. “Hold on, I just need to... to get this. It’s important.”

Alex already knew from the tone of Henry’s voice that Henry wouldn’t be looking back up again for quite a while. Without thinking too hard about it, he grasped the only piece of paper he had within reach—a coffee-stained napkin that he probably shouldn’t make a permanent addition to his growing collection of impulsive scribbles—and quietly picked up a pen.

  1. _I know things about Henry that he doesn’t know that I know, that I want him to know that I know. But I don’t want to know what that means._



Alex did his on-camera part of the photoshoot the next afternoon.

It felt oddly nerve wracking. It had, after all, been several years since he’d been in front of the camera. And somehow, Alex found that his perception of it all was quite different now that he was that much more familiar with the view from the other side of the lens. Also? He was naked. Completely naked.

The pictures wouldn’t show everything—there were certain parts that they were concealing strategically from the camera, but there was no strategic concealing to be had on their sparsely populated but still far-from-empty set. Thankfully, Alex had managed to convince Liam to come in and do the shoot.

Weirdly enough, Alex and Liam had been on better terms ever since that terribly awkward phone call Alex had made during his middle-of-the-night bisexual crisis. Still, it wasn’t like they spoke to one another that often, and despite the fact that they’d somehow both ended up in this godforsaken industry, they had never actually worked together before. Which was one of the reasons why Alex had been genuinely surprised that Liam had agreed so quickly when Alex had reached out to him about this shoot.

And thank God that Liam had agreed. Because just as Alex had suspected, Liam was just the right combination of affirming and demanding to help Alex ignore how strangely unfamiliar the situation felt and settle back into the rhythm of it fairly quickly.

Also, the nudity? Nothing Liam hadn’t seen before.

“A little to the left. Little more... Good. No, hold there, I’m gonna get a second angle. I said  _ hold. _ Great, perfect, fucking excellent, now just don’t fucking move-”

“Wow, Liam,” Alex deadpanned, letting his smile widen slightly. “And you used to be such a charmer.”

“Can we not do this now,” Liam countered easily, lowering the camera just long enough for a playful grin. And not one second longer.  _ “Yes, _ okay, that’s absolutely fucking _ it. _ Chin a little higher… Perfect. Hey, we should catch up sometime. Are you free later? No, hold there, that’s  _ so good.” _

Alex rolled his eyes, turning his head the other way just because.

Liam’s pictures were phenomenal. Alex browsed through them twice, still huddled in a robe in the small party tent that they used as their makeshift backstage area. He let himself linger on a few shots where Liam had captured the silhouette of his naked body against a backdrop of blinding, gorgeous sunlight. He didn’t actually look half bad.

“You’ve still got it.”

Alex looked up. Liam was stepping through the doorway of the tent. His expression was a little strange. He looked uncharacteristically hesitant, but somehow at the same time unusually purposeful. Huh.

“Thanks.” Alex nodded towards the laptop, which still displayed what was probably his favourite shot out of all of them. “And thanks for coming out for this, these look fucking amazing. I’m going to need you to teach me all of your secrets.”

“Please, like you couldn’t have pulled that off. Especially with a subject matter such as yourself.” Liam smiled briefly. “You know, I meant what I said out there... About maybe catching up?”

Alex hesitated. Which was weird. He usually didn’t hesitate at all, when an opportunity to have a bit of fun presented itself. Especially not with someone who knew him and all of his likes and dislikes and exactly what made him tick quite as well as Liam. Yet for some reason, Alex just… wasn’t feeling it.

“Not like that,” Liam suddenly added. His expression had turned strangely apologetic. “Actually, I was thinking it’d be cool if you could meet Spencer, sometime? My boyfriend.”

Wait.  _ What? _

Alex paused. He felt a sting of something, and it was definitely jealousy, but… Not quite in the way he’d expected it. “Liam, that’s… that’s great! Seriously, man. Congratulations.”

Liam’s smile shifted into something weirdly soft. “Thanks. It’s really good, actually. It’ll be six months next week.”

“That’s great,” Alex repeated firmly.

Shit. He had never heard Liam speak so shyly about some guy, before. But that was just  _ it, _ wasn’t it? Clearly, Spencer wasn’t just anybody. Not just another meaningless fling. Briefly, Alex let himself imagine what that might feel like. It would be kind of nice, wouldn’t it? To have someone about whom you couldn’t make yourself stop thinking. Someone about whom you didn’t actually  _ want  _ to stop thinking. Someone who made you smile just from the mere thought of seeing them again, just from the idea of being close to them in some, little way, and-

Wait.

“Well.” Liam coughed lightly. “Anyway. I’m so glad you seem okay with-”

“Alex! Major problem!” Suddenly, Nora burst through the opening of the tent, an unusually wild expression on her face. “Fucking NHL, those  _ fucking  _ sports losers. They’ve pulled Hunter from our campaign.”

“What?” Alex exclaimed sharply. “No, wait. That can’t be true.”

“Well, it fucking is.” Nora clicked something on her phone before unceremoniously shoving it in Alex’s face. Even the subject of the email made Alex wince –  _ Concerning the obscene nature of your photographic endeavour.  _ “What the fuck are we gonna do now?”

“You’ve got lots of other people still committed,” Liam interjected curiously. “Don’t you?”

“Thirty,” Alex and Nora said in unison. Nora sighed. “They’re voting on the bill on the  _ thirty-first, _ Liam. That’s our whole schtick.”

“Really?” Liam raised both eyebrows sceptically. “I don’t get it. Can’t you just make it… Not about that?

“It’s the focal point of the piece that June’s writing,” Alex explained tersely. He rubbed at his temple. “And since it’s June, it’s already stupidly brilliant. We’re not having her change one word.”

“But then we’ll need to find a replacement for fucking Hunter,” Nora pointed out grimly. “And fucking  _ fast. _ You do realize we’re supposed to send in all our final shots in two weeks?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage,” Liam said encouragingly. “Really, there’s got to be a ton of people who’d jump at the chance for this kind of exposure.”

Nora laughed a little hysterically. “We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, Liam. In  _ Texas.  _ This isn’t L.A. There’s no way we’ll be able to find a guy with the same caliber as our other models at such short notice. Who the fuck could we even get?”

Alex froze. Oh no. Oh  _ no. _

Nora was a little too busy glaring at the email on her phone to quite notice Alex’s suddenly grim expression. Liam, on the other hand, quickly turned towards him with apparent concern. “Alex? You alright, man?”

“I’m fine,” Alex said evenly. “Nora. I know who we could get.”

Nora’s gaze snapped back up at him. “What? Who?”

Alex grimaced. “So long as he says yes.”

“I don’t follow. Who are you-”

“Can  _ you  _ ask him?” Alex interrupted. He wasn’t quite meeting Nora’s eyes anymore. “Please?”

Nora swore under her breath. “Alex. Fuck, that’s… It’s  _ brilliant, _ is the thing. I just don’t think he’d ever do it.”

Liam was frowning. “Who?”

Both Alex and Nora ignored him.

“He’s our best bet,” Alex said weakly. He tried his best to keep his mind from spinning. This was going to be such a fucking  _ mess. _ “And I… I’ll do it for the campaign. Okay? I mean, if he even says yes. Honestly, we’re on better terms now, but…” Alex paused, thinking back on Henry’s tense, almost apprehensive expression when Alex had shown him some of their shots. God, if he wasn’t a prude. “I somehow can’t imagine that he’d be at all comfortable with this.”

Nora frowned.

“On better terms?” she repeated slowly. “Alex,  _ how? _ It’s not like you two are even talking.”

“Well,” Alex said airily. He wondered, briefly, how he could even begin to explain. “Nora. About that-”

Nora’s eyes widened. “Oh my  _ God.  _ Alex! How have we not talked about this? How have you not  _ told me? _ I’ve been telling you to play nice with the guy for weeks, why the hell would you do literally just that without even telling me that you’re-”

“Just ask him,” Alex interrupted hurriedly. “Okay? Ask him. I… I can’t do it. It’s got to be you.”

Nora fell silent. For a moment, she simply watched Alex.

“Oh no,” she said quietly. “Alex. Do you maybe... not hate Henry, anymore?”

“Henry,” Liam cut in.  _ “Henry?  _ As in, Henry Fox? Alex’s weirdly hot cupcake nemesis?”

Alex frowned. “Nemesis is pushing it a little, isn’t it?”

Liam grinned. “Ah, but no objections on his general attractiveness?”

“I didn’t say-”

“Are you fucking him?” Nora asked bluntly.

“What?” Alex exclaimed. “No! Jesus, no. We’re just… I make him tea, sometimes, and he-”

“You make him fucking _ tea?” _ Nora repeated incredulously. She put her head in her hands. “Oh no, it’s so much worse than sex. You actually fucking  _ like  _ him.”

“And now you’re going to take his picture,” Liam added, a little too happily. God, Alex really needed to get new friends. “His  _ nude  _ picture. Man, I kind of wanna stick around for this.”

“Not a chance,” Alex snapped. He wasn’t sure who he wanted to glare at more, Nora or Liam. Or maybe Henry. “Clearly, this isn’t even happening. There’s no fucking way that Henry would ever agree to something like this, especially given how directly it involves me. Right?”

Unfortunately, Alex was wrong. Henry said  _ yes. _

“Did you… Explain the whole thing properly?” Alex asked weakly. He was kind of pacing back and forth in his room. He wished he could make himself stop. “About how I literally need him in the nude, on camera? And not photoshop nude, but actually, totally,  _ completely  _ bare-ass nude?”

“No, he knows.” Nora was watching Alex with something like grim resignation. “He said it was fine.”

“Was that the word he used? Fine?”

“I’m paraphrasing a little, but-”

“Don’t,” Alex snapped. He paused, taking a breath. “Don’t paraphrase. What… What did he  _ say?” _

“Does it matter?” Nora crossed her arms impatiently. “Alex. Listen. I really need you not to fuck this up.”

“What’s that supposed to… Why the  _ fuck  _ would I-”

“I need you to do this shoot,” Nora continued evenly. “And I need you to do it professionally and respectfully, as you have with every other model in our cast. Whatever this  _ thing  _ between you and Henry is, I need you to reel it the fuck in until we’ve all gotten through this. Capische?”

“You think I don’t know that?” Alex shot back angrily. “You think I don’t fucking  _ hate  _ how he makes me feel? How his stupidly sweet smile makes me want to vomit, and how I fucking  _ miss  _ him right now even though we’re literally in the same building, and how he’s never going to… To  _ ever  _ think of me as anything more than-”

“Oh, shit. Alex. Sweetheart.” Nora crossed the room, putting her arms around him. Belatedly, Alex realized that he was shaking. “It’s okay, I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”

Alex let himself be held by her. He laughed weakly. “I’ve really fucked up,” he realized out loud. “Haven’t I?”

“Maybe not as much as you think.” Nora’s arms around him tightened. “It’s going to be alright, Alex.”

Alex smiled. He shook his head. “He just… He sets me on fire. He makes me feel weak and defenseless and so unbearably stupid, and now I really wish I hadn’t somehow convinced myself that I hated him to the point where I started yelling it from the fucking rooftops.”

“It wasn’t your smartest move,” Nora agreed gently. “But to be fair, the whole world was already pushing the narrative that Henry hated  _ you. _ You just made the decision to believe it.”

“Oh, Henry hates me,” Alex said quickly. “Or at least, he did? Lately, he’s… I don’t know. But it’s all a little beside the point, isn’t it? Henry isn’t even gay. So, that’s that.”

“Well,” Nora said delicately. “Why don’t you try to get some actual sleep tonight. Okay? It’s going to be an interesting day tomorrow. For all of us, but for you and Henry especially.”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

That night, Alex didn’t venture down to the kitchen. He still didn’t get much sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... as evidenced by this chapter, I did not make Alex a photographer so that he could take pictures of _not_ Henry. I am having stupid amounts of fun with this story, perhaps especially with this particular direction of it, and I'm always so giddy to read your reactions to everything!! ♡♡♡ 
> 
> next up: Henry has a _lot_ on his mind.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://everwitch-magiks.tumblr.com/) , feel free to come and yell about Alex and Henry and all the ways they're silly and stupid and oblivious! ♡


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much credit to [failing_at_fangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failing_at_fangirling/pseuds/failing_at_fangirling) for beta reading!!! ♡

Pez picked up on the eleventh ring.

“Oh, thank God,” Henry breathed out before Pez could get a word in. And, well. That certainly wasn’t a typical interaction between the two of them. “Were you asleep? I’m sorry if you were, I just… I’ve screwed up, Pez. I’ve really,  _ really  _ screwed up.”

“Slow down, H.” Pez’s tone was predictably sleepy. Something shuffled in the background. “So lovely of you to give me a ring. Fancy you being awake during the actual daytime over there?”

“It’s eight PM, actually.” Henry ran a hand through his hair. “And God knows I won’t be getting any bloody sleep tonight.”

“Oh?” Pez prompted. His voice had gotten a little clearer. “Writing’s still that bad, huh?”

Henry frowned. “What? No, it’s actually going unexpectedly great, but that’s not… this isn’t about the book. Something else has happened.”

“Well now,” Pez remarked curiously. “I'm sure it’ll be alright. Just tell me the sitch and we’ll figure this out, okay? Deep breath, first.”

Henry laughed shakily. God, he’d  _ missed  _ Pez. “Right. See, the thing is… fuck, I don’t even know how to say this.”

“Ah,” Pez said knowingly. “There’s been some developments in the Claremont-Diaz-cohabitation situation, then?”

“Sort of,” Henry admitted weakly. “But it’s not… it’s not just that.”

“This conversation clearly warrants a cup of tea,” Pez decided. “Why don’t you fix yourself a cup, too, and then we’ll-”

“No,” Henry said quickly. “No, I… Tea’s not a very good idea, right now.”

Pez was quiet for a brief moment—the calm before the storm, really. “Excuse me?  _ You  _ don’t want  _ tea? _ Henry, darling, please talk to me. Don’t tell me those fickle Americans are ruining your delicate taste buds with some sort of caffeinated abomination? Do I need to come and rescue you? Blink twice for yes."

Henry smiled. “Actually, Pez... those fickle Americans have sort of... been making me tea? Or, you know.  _ One  _ of them has.”

“Say what now?” Pez exclaimed. He sounded delighted. “Henry, my sweet, my dearest. Have you perhaps been canoodling with your cupcake gentleman over steaming cups of earl grey?”

_ “Canoodling _ isn’t the word I’d use. Actually, it’s not the word any sane person would use.”

“Ah, but you  _ have. _ Henry! How have you not kept me in the loop on this?”

“You're wrong,” Henry said flatly. “I’d say your ridiculous word choice warrants a romantic or sexual element, of which there have been none. Sorry to disappoint.”

“But there’s been developments, yes?” Pez prompted, ever optimistic. “I beg of you, do not keep me in suspense a moment longer. Tell me everything.”

Henry took a deep breath, nodding to himself. It was, after all, exactly why he’d called Pez in the first place. “Alright. Brace yourself.”

It was really something, how Henry proceeded to talk for twenty minutes straight. How Pez didn’t interrupt him once. He talked about his initially awkward encounters with Alex in the kitchen, about how Alex had quietly picked up on how Henry preferred his tea and how Alex had suddenly asked for some sort of temporary truce. He told Pez about Alex’s more frequent and less uneasy smiles, about their shared jokes and Alex’s many thoughtful questions and what suddenly felt not entirely unlike friendship. He explained Alex and Nora’s project and how important it was to them, how hard they were working on it and the incredible impact it was going to have. He recounted Nora asking him for a favour, less than half an hour earlier, and he quietly confessed how he’d known long before Nora had finished that he was going to say yes.

When Pez finally spoke again, there was something unusual in his tone. He sounded confused. “So, let’s see if I’ve got this right: Alex Claremont-Diaz, the love of your life, the leading man in all of your wildest, sexiest dreams, is producing a collection of highly pornographic naked photographs of a number of dashing young men… and you just agreed to be one of them?”

“Yeah,” Henry exhaled. He closed his eyes. “Yes. Exactly.”

“Right,” Pez said slowly. “And why, Henry dearest, didn’t you just say  _ no? _ ”

Henry smiled weakly. “I know, I know. This is all so bloody idiotic.”

“That depends, doesn’t it?” Pez disagreed. “Which is why I really need you to answer my question, Henry. Why didn’t you say no?”

“Oh, I couldn’t have,” Henry said quickly. “I couldn’t. You’ve got no idea how much this campaign means to Alex, and how much it means to Nora, and to June. If I can help them in some, little way, then—”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Pez suddenly interrupted. There was a no-nonsense edge to his voice that Henry wasn't used to hearing. Pez was generally all nonsense all the time, quite on purpose. “Come on, H. Dig a little deeper.”

Henry frowned. “I am. This really is incredibly important to Alex. Besides, the cause is important in and of itself, so I’d be contributing to something really good. Plus, if I'm a part of this project that has Alex's name attached to it, then the world might realize that I don't actually hate him, right? Which would be  _ fantastic." _

Pez was quiet for a little bit, just long enough for Henry to become slightly anxious. Still, when Pez spoke again, his voice was much warmer than before. “Henry, please. Try to be honest. It’s just me, okay?”

“I  _ am  _ being honest,” Henry insisted stubbornly. He really was. “I couldn’t have said no, and that’s genuinely because of everything I’ve just mentioned.”

“Then perhaps I simply need to rephrase my question,” Pez said decisively. “Why don’t you tell me what it was that made you so desperate to come up with all of those reasons and excuses? What made you so desperate to say  _ yes?” _

Henry sucked in a breath. Leave it to Pez to see through the bullshit that Henry hadn’t even realized he was making up for himself. Nothing he had just told Pez had been even close to the thoughts that had first formed in his mind, earlier, when he’d realized exactly what Nora had been about to ask him. “That’s… that’s complicated.”

“Good.” Henry could hear the smile in Pez’s voice. “Now elaborate.”

Henry ran a hand through his hair. Suddenly, he was very thankful that Pez wasn’t watching his expression. “Pez, the pictures that Alex is taking for this thing… they’re really good. No, actually, they’re _insanely_ good. He’s basically making all of those guys look like they’re sex personified, like they’re the most desirable men in this universe, and I just… the idea of him making me look like that? Or maybe the idea that _I_ could make him _see me_ like that? Because I could, I really think I _could_ – especially since I think he might’ve gotten the impression that I’m some sort of frigid prude who doesn’t know the first thing about seduction. I’m going to prove him so _wrong._ And that’s probably the stupidest bloody ambition I’ve had in my life, but—”

“I think it’s a great ambition,” Pez interjected. His strangely reproachful tone from before had vanished entirely. Instead, he sounded downright ecstatic. “Seriously, Hazza, I’m getting a little teary eyed over here. You’re doing something about your feelings! Finally!”

“I am not,” Henry said flatly. “Never mind my godforsaken feelings, Pez, I just… I'm so bloody _tired_ of holding myself back all the time. Just this once, I am going to make the man I’ve secretly admired for years take a good look at me, and show him that I’m someone who’s desirable, and sexy, and goddamn irresistible. And then I’m going to finish my book and go home and finally put an end to this miserably unrequited chapter of my love life. And after all is said and done, Alexander is going to find himself looking at those photographs every so often, and _he’s_ going to be the one wondering what might’ve been."

“Henry. Wow.” Pez actually sounded impressed. “There’s a lot to unpack there, babes, but this energy? Is exactly right. You have my blessing to wreck this sweet boy’s false expectations of your alleged frigidness. Let’s see how he handles  _ you, _ for a change.”

“Yeah,” Henry breathed out. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to reel his flaring emotions back in. Except, when his eyes fluttered open once more, he didn’t exactly feel less wound up. Every moment since his conversation with Nora, he'd felt as if the blood running through his veins had been infused with pure determination. “That’s the fucking plan.”

That night, Henry didn’t write a single word, nor did he get very much sleep. The next morning, he had three emails sitting in his inbox: two of them were from Pez, and both of those contained an assortment of what Pez would’ve called ‘motivational GIFs’, except half of them actually depicted Henry and Alex’s cupcake fight from every possible angle. The email subject read:  _ At least you can’t possibly fuck it up this badly!  _ Weirdly enough, it actually made Henry smile.

The third email was from Shaan and consisted of a single, ominous sentence:  _ Pez says the rewrite is coming along, so please send over your progress so far.  _ Henry tried not to think too hard about Shaan’s inevitable reaction as he attached his current, still messy, still  _ completely  _ inconsistent version of the book, which contained frighteningly few paragraphs from the last draft that Shaan had seen on account of the fact that Henry had sort of rewritten most of that version entirely, and hit send. After a moment’s consideration, he opened the document again and set it to print as well. He was due for another round of merciless highlighting. Then he climbed up the stairs, bypassed the kitchen and headed to a room at the end of the corridor where Nora and Alex had set up something of an office.

He found Alexander by the printer.

Henry paused in the doorway, his eyes locking with Alex’s. Alex, who had been curiously eyeing the pages that were rapidly emerging from the printer, looked unexpectedly unsettled at the sight of Henry. Sort of like he’d very much have liked it if the printer could’ve come to life and swallowed him whole, right there and then, and thereby saved him from having a conversation with Henry this particular morning, hours before their impending photoshoot. Somehow, the tension in Alex’s expression made it much easier for Henry to take a steadying breath. This was actually  _ good, _ wasn’t it? This was what he wanted. Exactly what he wanted.

Henry shifted his feet, letting himself lean casually against the doorframe. He summoned up a smile that wasn’t flirtatious or suggestive, exactly, but still relaxed and inviting. Expectant. When he spoke, he made sure to carefully enunciate each syllable. He spoke every word with purpose. “Good morning, Alex.”

Pez would’ve probably ridiculed him for his somewhat formal choice of words, but Henry wasn’t interested in trying to act like someone else entirely. And besides, the way Alex’s expression shifted, his mouth falling open just a little bit and his eyes widening in undeniable surprise? Henry actually had to bite back his widening smile.

“Henry. Hey.” Alex seemed to have recovered a little. He still looked uncharacteristically nervous, though—good. “Did you, um. Did you sleep okay?”

“Not exactly,” Henry admitted easily. He tilted his head a little to the left, as if he was considering. “I’m not sure how well one is supposed to sleep the night before one’s debut in… soft porn, was it?”

Alex blinked. He glanced towards the door, sort of like he was seriously contemplating making a run for it. “Right. Henry, about that… Are you sure about this? I mean, you don’t _ have to _ do this, if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s okay if you… if you've changed your mind?"

Slowly, Henry let his lips curl into a slight grin. Dear God, if Alex didn't just hand him the perfect opportunity. "You think this makes me uncomfortable?”

Alex furrowed his brows slightly. “Sure? Most of our models are uncomfortable, to some degree. It’s, you know, a pretty strange situation. I’m just… trying to look out for you? I guess."

“That’s very sweet, Alex,” Henry told him calmly. He indulgently let his grin widen. “But I think I’ll be all right. To be honest, I’m rather looking forward to it.”

“You are?” Alex asked quickly. He was staring at Henry as if Henry was something very perplexing, like a piece of a puzzle that Alex just couldn’t solve. “Really?”

“Sure.” Henry stepped into the room, manoeuvring himself next to Alex. He calmly gathered the printed draft of his novel. “I told you, your project is really something. I’m excited to be a part of it.”

“Right,” Alex said faintly. He’d taken a step away from Henry. “And you’re sure you’re alright with… with me taking those pictures?”

Henry turned towards him, his manuscript in his arms. He took his time, biting his lower lip for a second, quickly sorting through potential phrases in his mind. One did not write romance novels for nearly a decade without accumulating a significant arsenal of effective seduction. Soon, he'd managed to settle on something that felt just right: bold, and confident, and completely unsubtle.

"I think I'm in good hands," he said pleasantly. "Although, having seen how great your other photos have turned out… it's important to have a variation between them, isn't it? Did any of the other guys actually get in the lake? I was thinking it might make the photos more interesting if I got myself all wet—skin glistening in sunlight, that sort of thing. Maybe some close-ups of water droplets trickling down my torso. What do you think?"

The way Henry's words made Alex’s eyes widen, his expression shifting into one of uncontained bewilderment, was unbelievably satisfying.

"Well." Henry reeled in his smug grin in favour of a deceptively sweet smile. "I suppose I'll see you out there, yeah?"

He left the room before Alex had time to answer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _love_ Pez. don't you just _love_ Pez? god, I'd read the shit out of a whole Pez spinoff -- I'm thinking a parallel story to rwrb, where Pez is off on his own adventures in philantroping and getting caught up in lots of excitement and glitz while also checking in with Henry every so often and marvelling at his friends escapades in international relations. it'll be the _mandalorian_ of the rwrb universe, minus the wars.
> 
> next up: photographs are taken! yes. it is _time._
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://everwitch-magiks.tumblr.com/), catch me rambling in the tags about Alex and Henry and all the AUs I don't have time to write!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still completely indebted to [failing_at_fangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failing_at_fangirling/pseuds/failing_at_fangirling) for excellent beta reading, in particular for this chapter which has undergone so many changes for the better! ♡♡♡

Alex Claremont-Diaz was suffering. Because Henry? Henry was…. God. Alex couldn't even describe it _. _ Really, he had long since given up every attempt at making some sort of coherent, comprehensive list of all the sudden and subtle changes in Henry's behaviour that were just  _ completely  _ fucking infuriating.

It was in the little things, wasn’t it? The weight of Henry’s gaze on Alex. The careful, deliberate way Henry enunciated certain words. The way Henry’s smiles seemed relaxed and always slowly growing, completely unlike the reluctant, careful tugging at Henry’s lips that Alex had grown so used to over the past few weeks.

God, Henry’s lips. Henry’s face. Every agonizingly alluring inch of Henry’s body that would soon be quite literally put on display for Alex... and for their small group of perfectly professional yet unfortunately also obnoxiously nosy crew. Alex desperately needed another cup of coffee.

“You holding up okay?” Nora had strolled over to him and was holding out what looked very much like a double espresso. Bless her. “Henry seems… unexpectedly fine.”

Alex made an ambiguous noise and took a large gulp of coffee. The heat of it burned his throat. “Tell me about it.”

Nora tilted her head. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it? This might actually go smoothly.”

“Sure,” Alex muttered. He let his gaze drift back over to Henry who was having a seemingly charming conversation with their make-up intern. Henry's posture was far too relaxed and confident for someone who was wearing nothing but a flimsy robe that he was mere minutes away from taking off. All too often, Henry actually made the intern laugh. “I might die from this, but sure.”

“You’ll be fine.” Nora smiled with a confidence Alex wished he had in himself. “You’ve done this a bajillion times now. Henry hasn’t.”

_ “Henry _ is acting like getting naked with strangers is his favourite Tuesday pastime. How the fuck am I supposed to gain the upper hand, here?”

“Maybe there’s more to him than you know,” Nora suggested calmly. “And Alex, maybe this shouldn’t be an issue of higher or lower ground? Maybe this is something you’re doing, y’know, together. As a team. Remember how you told me you actually care about this guy?”

The intern laughed again. Henry was smiling this  _ really  _ pretty smile that he had never once directed towards Alex. Quickly, Alex looked back down towards his coffee. “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m having second fucking thoughts about that on account of the fact that Henry’s being an obtuse fucking-”

“All right, the lights are in place. Look alive, people.” Zahra was herding crew members away from the area they’d set up. She paused long enough to give Alex a stern nod. “Diaz, take it away. Try not to let this one drag on for six ages.”

“I think,” Alex said tightly, “That we’d all like to make this quick.”

Zahra raised both eyebrows, but Alex didn’t give her the time to ask questions. Instead he gulped down the rest of his coffee, shoved the empty paper cup into Nora’s hands and took a desperate hold of his camera. “Right. Henry. Why don’t you… Go over to the dock? And we’ll figure out some poses, first, before… Before you take off the robe.”

And that’s when something miraculous happened. Henry… complied. But he didn’t just  _ comply. _ He met Alex’s eyes long enough to offer a firm nod and a strangely reassuring smile. Then he made his way to the dock and turned around, holding Alex's gaze and just waiting, every ounce of his attention focused sharply on Alex.

Jesus. Somehow in comparison with Henry’s coy demeanor during the past few hours, this sudden bout of deliberate obedience was even more disarming. Alex let himself hold up the camera for a second so he could take in Henry’s appearance through the lens, instead. Unfortunately, it didn’t feel less intimidating.

“I like you there,” Alex blurted out.

He  _ really  _ did, and apparently any hope of holding onto some small part of his dignity throughout this exercise was long gone. What composure was there to be had when the sunlight was catching so beautifully in Henry’s hair, making him look every inch an irresistible daydream? And dear God, Henry wasn’t even naked. Yet.

Alex cleared his throat, desperately trying to regain some semblance of control. “Zahra, get Henry the purple shawl. Good, okay, try holding it loosely behind you? Yeah, that’s nice, but maybe take a step back...” Henry did, in the same manner that he’d followed all of Alex’s instructions so far—immediately and with exact precision. He was looking right at Alex, his gaze heavy. Alex swallowed thickly. “Can you turn a little sideways? No, the other way… Yeah. Wait, no. Why don’t you…”

Helplessly, Alex trailed off. Henry’s eyes were still on him, sharp and expectant and completely captivating, and Alex… Alex was only human. He already knew that he was going to find himself thinking back on this exact moment many, many times.

“Look the other way,” Alex stammered, desperately trying to make himself focus again. Henry did, and… huh. Alex angled his camera a little differently. Actually… “Okay,  _ that’s _ good. That’s extremely good. Look up a little? Yeah.  _ Yes.”  _ Alex forced himself to take a deep breath. He could do this. He  _ had to _ do this. “Let’s do a few shots like this. Zahra, can I get the areca in the foreground?”

Zahra immediately sprung into action, directing their two light technicians to move a potted areca palm, one of the options among their Things To Move Around On Set In Order To Tastefully Obstruct Genitals From View (a collection Alex and Nora had brainstormed over a series of increasingly colorful cocktails), so that it was situated appropriately between Henry and the camera. Alex only had to tell them to adjust the position twice before they got it exactly right. They were getting comically phenomenal at this, after all this time.

“Good,” Alex decided once everything was in place. “So it’ll be out of focus but definitely block out… What we need it to block out.” Alex cleared his throat, his stomach once again an uneasy bundle of nerves mixed with a helpless surge of something far more potent. Because this was  _ it, _ for better or for worse. Probably both. “Henry, can you. Um. The robe?” Alex’s awkwardness definitely made Zahra shoot him a strange look, but Alex was a little too focused on not completely losing it to care.

Henry shrugged out of his robe.

Alex carefully kept his eyes trained on Henry’s face as Henry calmly handed the robe to that intern he’d been talking to, before. Henry didn’t so much as look at her, though. Instead, he had carefully returned to the pose that Alex had guided him to earlier, still following Alex’s precise instructions. He looked beautiful and relaxed and perfectly at ease as he waited for Alex to pick things back up. Jesus  _ fuck. _ Alex was going to fucking die.

Henry with clothes on was a sight Alex had come to think of as infuriatingly attractive, but Henry without the aforementioned garments? Alex swallowed, letting his gaze travel lower for a brief, indulgent moment, just to get it over with. And good God. Alex was definitely going to wake up from wet dreams about this for fucking  _ months. _

“Great,” Alex managed shakily. He held up his camera and snapped a first photo. He just had to get this done as quickly as possible. “Can you… chin up a little?” Henry complied.  _ Click. _ “Good. Little to the left…”  _ Click, click. _ “Okay. Smile a bit more?”  _ Click. _

This was… better. Easier. This was familiar amidst all the present strangeness. And as reluctant as Alex was to admit it, Henry was actually doing really well. His pose looked natural, and the way he let his lips tug up just the right amount at Alex’s words was perfect. Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing ever to work with a model who didn't seem to be dying inside from the unignorable fact that he was, in fact, naked. Maybe the photographs from today could actually turn out… very okay? What a notion.

With a surge of unexpected eagerness, Alex snapped a few more pictures. Fuck, Henry looked fantastic. The pictures were going to look so  _ good. _ Good enough for Alex to finally,  _ finally _ feel like he’d regained some of the confidence that he usually felt in this specific situation. Maybe enough confidence to get the two of them back on slightly more even ground. After all, Henry wasn’t the only one who could play coy games of mock flirting.

“Alright,” Alex said lightly. He snapped two more shots just to give himself an excuse for a pointed pause. “Henry, why don’t you… Think of whatever you had for breakfast this morning.” Alex smiled as Henry’s carefully arranged expression gave way to a startled grin.  _ Click, click, click, click. Click-click. _ Perfect. “Earl grey, right? So sorry I wasn’t around to make it for you.”

“That’s what you get for sleeping in,” Henry returned easily, his grin widening. He glanced briefly in Alex’s direction, almost like he couldn’t help himself. Alex couldn’t get his finger on the shutter fast enough.  _ That _ was a picture. “Should I be quiet?”

“Nah. Turn your head to the left?” _Click._ “That’s cute. You look good like this.” That seemed to make Henry’s smile falter momentarily, for whatever reason. Except, Henry’s expression soon transformed entirely as he leaned his head back, a cheeky grin spreading across his lips. And fuck if Alex didn’t want to keep pushing things in this exact direction. At least if it got Henry to give him more of _this_ energy. “Look back at me? Yeah. That’s really fucking hot, Henry. I can’t understand why you’re putting words on paper for a living. You’re good at this.”

Henry cocked his head lazily to the side. He glanced towards Alex again. “Maybe what I do for a living isn’t so very different from this.”

Alex would be lying if he claimed that idea didn’t throw him off a bit. So, naturally, he lied. “You know, I’ve often thought so myself.”

That made Henry’s smile soften, his expression for some reason settling into something gentler, something helplessly fond. “I'm sure you have, Alexander. So I'm sure you don’t need me to elaborate."

“For the record, no.” Alex snapped two more pictures. He stepped a little to the left and gestured for Zahra to move the areca accordingly. “But why don’t you tell me anyway?”

Henry tilted his head the other way, biting down lightly on his lower lip, and God, Zahra really couldn’t get that stupid plant in place fast enough. Contemplative Henry was  _ hot.  _ “It’s all about constructing an elaborate fantasy, isn’t it? About creating something from nothing and making the reader, or, well, the viewer, buy into your illusion.”

“Maybe.” Alex actually paused for a second. Henry shouldn’t be able to intrigue Alex this much with just his words, not when every aspect of Henry's outstanding physical qualities were right there. God, every part of Henry was fucking infuriating. “But I’m sure your words are much less of an illusion than the superficial realities we create in the fashion industry. Your stories must come from somewhere, right? There’s got to be some layer of… of authenticity.”

For some reason, Henry very carefully did not smile. His blue eyes looked unusually piercing when he spoke. “You’d be surprised, Alex.”

Alex stared at him, suddenly confused. There was something Henry was telling him between the lines, wasn’t there? Something important. But what?

Zahra coughed. “Diaz? Is this a good angle, or no?”

Alex shrugged. He snapped a couple more pictures, mostly for appearances sake. The feeling was entirely different now that Henry seemed to have forgotten that Alex had told him to smile. Alex already knew that these shots wouldn’t make the final cut. They needed to get back to that playfulness they had going before.  _ That  _ was what was going to get them the money shot. And then they could wrap this up, and Alex could pretend to enjoy the bittersweet relief of seeing Henry put his clothes back on.

“Let’s shake things up,” Alex decided out loud. “You can put the robe back on for a bit, Henry, I want to try a different pose. Maybe you could go over to the railing, or—"

"Like this?" Henry ignored the intern who'd scuttled over with his robe. Instead he strode over to the side of the dock, putting his hands on the railing and hesitated briefly. One quick, calculated glance towards Alex later, Henry leaned forward, resting his wrists on the dark wood and arching his back exquisitely. His eyes found Alex’s once more, and whatever he found in Alex’s expression seemed to encourage him even more. Alex watched, his mouth dry, as Henry pushed his hips backwards, his ass high in the air.

“Too much?” Henry wondered lightly, his expression carefully arranged into one of polite curiosity.

“Just a bit,” Zahra muttered. She sounded reluctantly impressed.

Alex swore under his breath. Henry raised a perfectly elegant eyebrow, another smile tugging at his lips. A  _ knowing _ smile.

"Fuck you," Alex said succinctly. He took two steps forward, fumbling with the camera.  _ "Yes, _ okay, that's stupidly good. Can we move the fucking plant? Fantastic. Henry, stay there. And look at me."

"I am," Henry said quietly, his gaze unwavering. "Where else would I look?"

"Shut up. Shut all the way up." Alex clicked the shutter frantically, rapidly changing the angle. This, he thought dazedly, was it. Hell, this could be the cover. "Chin a  _ little _ higher… Yeah. That's golden."

The set had gone eerily quiet, which was unusual. Alex had grown accustomed to working with a few murmured conversations in the background. Their team was good at keeping any distractions to a minimum, but somehow this situation usually seemed to bring out a certain amount of casual conversation among them, perhaps as a reminder to themselves that this was fine, this was normal, nothing to see here. Now though, Alex would've bet good money that every single one of them had grown still, their eyes fixed on Henry. It was one of those magical visuals for which you couldn't quite plan. The angle of the sunlight was just right, and the way it danced on the water in the background and made Henry's eyes gleam brightly was just stunning, especially combined with how every part of Henry, from the tilt of his head to the jut of his hips to his deliciously sassy grin, seemed utterly drenched in scorching, aching desire…

Alex lowered the camera slowly. "I, uh. I think we got it."

Henry blinked twice. For some reason, he looked startled.

"Right," Nora said loudly. She waved frantically towards the intern who belatedly snapped out of whatever daze she was in and hurried over towards Henry with the robe. Alex had the sense to turn around, planting his eyes firmly on the ground. He forced himself to breathe. "Let's start packing up," Nora continued briskly. "Henry, thank you so much, feel free to go get changed. Alex, walk with me. Alex.  _ Now, _ Alex, come on."

Alex let Nora tug him away, his camera still in a tight grip. They set off along the shore, which didn't really make any logistical sense, but not a single person seemed to question Nora's judgement. Alex permitted himself one, brief glance backwards, his eyes catching Henry's for half a second. Henry was fastening the robe around his hips. He looked strangely exhausted, and for some reason his eyes were lingering on Alex. As soon as their eyes met though, Henry quickly let his gaze drop to the ground.

"What the fuck," Alex muttered.

"Oh, shut up," Nora snapped. She quickened her pace. "We're walking, Alex, come on. Let's get you both some space."

"I'm not sure if I want space." Alex frowned. He wanted to look back again. He wanted to look at  _ Henry _ again. Preferably with less of an audience. "Nora, do you think… I mean." He swallowed thickly. "Was Henry flirting with me?"

Nora's grip on Alex's arm tightened. "Alex, dearest, whatever gave you that idea?"

Alex frowned. "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or-"

"Oh my God." Nora stopped abruptly. She let go of Alex's arm as though it had burned her.  _ "Men. _ Yes, Alex, that is what flirting looks like. Congratulations."

"But that's not possible." Alex's frown deepened. "Henry is straight. Henry is  _ definitely _ straight."

Nora crossed her arms. Her expression was tight around her eyes in a way that Alex wasn't used to. "Alex. I believe I've said this before, and I can't believe I'm wasting my time and energy telling you again, but… maybe you should just  _ talk _ to Henry about these things? About any misunderstandings between you? You know, like actual adults would."

Alex was shaking his head slowly. "But he's… he  _ is _ straight. Isn't he?"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Alex," Nora groaned. She glared at him. "Just, for the love of God,  _ talk to Henry. _ Please. Before I lose what little sanity I have left."

"I  _ would've, _ if you hadn't dragged me away from—"

"Oh, you don't want an audience for this conversation," Nora interrupted. She sounded completely certain. "Henry isn't going anywhere, Alex, he'll still be here tonight. Just go find him when everyone else has cleared out."

In the end, Alex couldn't keep himself away from Henry for longer than thirty minutes.

He'd returned to his room in the house and had ended up pacing back and forth, his mind spinning. The image of Henry's naked form in the sunlight was still fresh in his mind. Henry's meaningful smiles, the way he'd kept glancing back at Alex as if he couldn't help himself, making sure he held Alex's full attention… Could it actually have meant something? Was it possible, after all, that Henry wasn't profoundly indifferent to him? Alex wanted to know. No, actually, he  _ needed _ to know. He needed to know immediately.

Alex flung open the door to his room and took the stairs two steps at a time. He was a little out of breath by the time he'd made his way down to the basement. The door to Henry's room was open. Alex took a deep breath, gathering his courage. Then he stepped forward and knocked lightly on the doorframe.

Henry was sitting on the edge of his bed. He had a towel slung around his shoulders and his hair was damp and unusually tousled. Evidently, he'd taken a shower. He wore dark sweats that looked like something one might use for pyjamas. He looked up abruptly when Alex knocked, his eyes a little wide.

"Hey." Alex hoovered by the door for a moment. Should he just step inside? Should he wait for Henry to invite him? "You look… less naked."

Henry huffed out something of a laugh. He held Alex's gaze. "I guess."

Alex's feet carried him across the threshold before he'd quite made up his mind. "Listen, Henry. I'm… I just, do you—"

"Alex, I… I can't…" Henry got to his feet. His expression twisted into something painful. "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, earlier."

"And if you didn't?" Alex asked. He spoke slowly, watching carefully for Henry's reaction. "If I was extremely into everything, today?"

Henry went completely still. His expression looked oddly questioning, his eyes clouded by something like doubt or disbelief. Alex would've much preferred hope. Yet then Henry's expression shifted. He swallowed, his jaw setting firmly, and there was no mistaking the way his gaze settled on Alex's mouth.

"Alexander." Alex's name sounded impossibly sweet on Henry's lips — instantly, Alex wanted to hear him say it again. Henry took a small, deliberate, unmistakable step forward. "Alex. Please."

Alex let himself move a little closer, slowly but surely entering into Henry's space. Henry's gaze flickered up to meet Alex's steadily. Something about the air between them felt electric, like they were on the precipice of an epic, glorious disaster.

Henry's murmured  _ please _ still hung in the air between them. Taking it to heart, Alex finally closed his eyes and leaned in.

Henry's lips were soft and a little chapped and parted willingly for Alex. Alex's hands settled on Henry's hips without really pulling him closer, just pressing firmly into Henry as he deepened the kiss, greedily licking into Henry's mouth and sucking on his lower lip. And God, Henry was kissing him back. Henry was  _ kissing him back.  _ He'd flattened his palms against Alex's chest and was slowly feeling his way lower, the tips of his fingers a blunt pressure through Alex's shirt. Alex's breath hitched when Henry's thumbs flicked against his nipples repeatedly, clearly on purpose. Even through fabric, it felt amazing.  _ Henry _ felt amazing. God, Alex wanted him naked again, wanted every tantalizing inch of him, wanted to put his mouth on Henry's bare skin and commit all of him to memory, wanted—

Except then Henry pushed harder. Pushed Alex  _ away. _ Alex stumbled backwards, his heart still racing and his mind suddenly fixed on a single, terrifying thought.

"Fuck, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Alex dropped his hands from Henry's hips. "I, I shouldn't have assumed you wanted—"

"Hey, no. You're good." Henry shifted his feet, almost stepping back into Alex's space. Almost. "I kissed you back, didn't I? I liked it."

Alex's heart skipped a beat. "You… you liked it."

Slowly, Henry took a step backwards. Then another. "Alex, it can't happen again. It can't."

"What?" Alex exclaimed, only to immediately backpedal. "I mean, you obviously don't owe me this, or anything, but… but you  _ liked _ it?"

Henry rolled his eyes. "As if that's important."

Alex frowned. "Isn't it?"

"Look," Henry began, his voice quietly focused. "If I was younger, and less aware of my own boundaries, and quite frankly less prone to self-preservation, I would have let this happen. I would've made this mistake many times over."

"How could it be a  _ mistake _ , if—"

"I would’ve let myself have you as often as you’d let me.” Henry kept his gaze carefully fixed on the floor. He spoke in a measured tone, his voice soft but strangely even. "But that's not how this is going to go."

"Hey," Alex said softly. He was starting to feel quite lost. There was too much happening all at once. "You're not… you're not gay? Or just not out? Or…"

"Oh, I'm gay." Henry kicked at the floor. He still wasn't meeting Alex's eyes. "I'm very, very gay."

"Not out, then," Alex repeated. He felt confident about that. He would've heard. "But this isn't a… a public setting. We're alone, in private. So  _ why _ can't we—"

"Not every man who's attracted to men is going to fall in bed with you, Alex." Henry glanced up briefly. The look in his eyes was guarded. "That might not be what you’re used to, but such is the reality."

"But you like me," Alex said slowly. He was still struggling to wrap his head around everything that had just come to light, but this was perhaps the most urgent matter at hand. "Henry. You  _ like _ me. Don't you?"

"Listen," Henry said tightly, the same way he'd said  _ look _ not one minute earlier. "You need to go. You need to leave me alone."

God, Alex didn’t want to. Alex  _ really  _ didn’t want to. “Henry, no, don’t shut me out like this. Please.”

“You say that like I owe you an explanation.” Henry raised his gaze from the floor, perhaps once and for all. His voice had started to shake. "I don’t, Alex. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t keep assuming that you understand things you don’t actually know anything about. If I don’t walk away from this, it’s going to end me.”

From this. Walk away from  _ this. _ No words had ever filled Alex with such a conflicting mixture of fear and hope.

"If you… if you'd only let me in, maybe I  _ could _ understand. Maybe I could—"

"I don't want to let you in," Henry cut in. There was a hard edge in his voice. "Okay? I never asked for any of this. There’s a reason for why I always stayed so far away from you."

"Henry," Alex said weakly. Suddenly, he felt exhausted. He had always known that Henry had avoided him intentionally. He'd been right, hadn’t he? God, why did he have to be  _ right. _ "What’s that supposed to mean?"

"It's none of your business."

"You've made it my business, haven't you?" Alex pointed out. “I just can’t understand-”

"Just leave me alone, Alex."

"But-"

"Alex," Henry interrupted in a tone that actually made Alex flinch. Henry sounded desperate. "I would appreciate it if you would back off, just like I've asked you to several times, now."

Alex stumbled backwards. God, what a fool he’d been to let himself hope that Henry Fox might ever want him in any way, to let himself imagine that these past few weeks might’ve meant something for Henry, too. He’d set himself up for this shattering disappointment, hadn’t he? How could he have been so  _ stupid. _ “You know, for a while there I think I actually liked you. I almost thought we were friends.”

Henry's mouth had settled into a thin line. "We were never going to be friends, Alex."

"I can see that now.” Alex paused in the doorway. The way Henry was looking at him, his expression one of weary apprehension yet his eyes clear blue and piercing, was as frustrating as it was unmistakable. For whatever reason, Henry was going to keep pushing Alex away. “I just… I can’t understand  _ why.” _

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Henry’s eyes narrowed. He looked almost angry. Almost like some part of his usually flawless self-control had finally snapped in half. “You know what? Fine.  _ Fine.”  _ Alex watched as Henry marched over to his desk and gathered up a pile of printed pages. Then he turned abruptly, walked over to Alex and forced them into Alex’s hands. “You think you want to know why? Just read it. It’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Alex glanced down at the messy stack of pages in his hands, his mind racing. Wait. Could this be…?

"I believe I told you to get out,” Henry added sharply. He’d crossed his arms, and his eyes weren’t meeting Alex’s. "I'm not going to tell you again."

Alex watched him for a moment. There was so much left unsaid, wasn’t there? Too much. But clearly he’d already overstayed his welcome, and for the moment Henry wasn’t willing to listen.

So Alex went back up the stairs. He headed straight for his room, closing the door behind him and settling on his bed, looking down at the pages in his hands. Slowly, he turned the first one, peering at three words in cursive in the centre of an otherwise blank paper. Must be the title.

_ The Waterloo Letters _

Alex turned the page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot to unpack there, right? I won't say too much right now except the obvious: next up, Alex reads a book.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://everwitch-magiks.tumblr.com/), feel free to talk to me about anything and everything about our favourite international powercouple!! ♡♡♡


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you should've _seen_ how different this chapter looked when I first sent it to [failing_at_fangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failing_at_fangirling/pseuds/failing_at_fangirling) for beta reading... or actually, you shouldn't, that's kind of the whole point I'm about to make: get yourself a beta reader like Maggie!! I owe _so much_ of how this turned out to you, thank you for reading and rereading and helping me figure out how to make this so much better!!! ♡♡♡

_ ‘I was walking through mist. I'd been here before, many times before, but the forest looked entirely different now that it was clouded in misery. It's strange, isn’t it? How a place can be so familiar, so achingly joyful, even after it’s been so irrevocably tainted with grief. How a soul can feel so untethered like it’s been unraveled from within, torn apart over and over and abandoned out in the dark woods. Left alone to the mercy of the night. _

_ I want to destroy this place. I want it obliterated. I want every tree cut down, every branch torn off, every godforsaken leaf burned into hot, red flames. I want to see this forest turned into a scorching inferno. I want to watch it bleed. I want vengeance. I want, more than anything, to just go home.’ _

Alex frowned at the page. He was probably a few chapters in—the draft that Henry had given him kept jumping between different parts of the story, so it was a little hard to follow. Sometimes there was a page break which might’ve been intended as a transition from one section to the next, but just as often a paragraph would break off mid sentence and another would follow, switching right into a different scene. The words ‘rough draft’ were quickly taking on an entirely new meaning for Alex.

At any rate, Alex had managed to read a significant part of the book. And unfortunately, he was feeling quite lost. How was  _ this  _ supposed to give him the answers to anything?

Sure, it was certainly all about the infamous Alexander Cadwell. Alex would even go as far as to say that Cadwell was the main character this time around. Everything was written from his perspective, most of it in the form of letters, and Cadwell was… well, he wasn't exactly cheerful. He seemed to be struggling with this weirdly unspecific misery, but even in his state of vague grief he certainly came across as absolutely ruthless. Currently, he was working towards some sort of pyrotechnical revenge, the context for which Alex hadn’t even begun to grasp. If there even was a context? Did Cadwell’s viciousness need context, or was Henry content to portray the man as utterly despicable by nature?

Henry’s words were slowly filling Alex with a quiet resignation that he hadn’t expected of himself. A betrayal like this should’ve made Alex angry or at the very least frustrated. But this… Alex couldn’t be angry at this, couldn’t find anything within himself other than bitter, dejected disappointment. Because if Henry was finally basing Cadwell on Alex, and  _ this  _ was how Henry chose to depict him… was this how Henry saw Alex? How Henry truly perceived him? It shouldn’t be, not after they’d gotten to know one another over the past few weeks, after Alex had been brave enough to share some parts of himself with Henry and had been rewarded with little glimpses of Henry’s thoughts and feelings in return. It shouldn’t have to end like this.

Was Henry doing this on purpose? Was this just another way for Henry to push Alex away? If so, Alex thought bitterly, Henry might actually be about to succeed at that once and for all.

Alex turned another page and kept reading, slowly making his way through what seemed to be an entirely different scene. At any rate, the feeling of this section was… not the same. Definitely not the same.

_ ‘His smile, ever devastating. His heart, never to be mine. My every heartbeat, forsaken, for nothing. All for him. _

_ He’s like sunshine. He is a soft shimmer on a tranquil summer afternoon, always glowing, always brilliant. And I’m forever lost in his light. I’m drowning in it, desperate for just another glimpse of it, for another glimpse of him. I will always be desperate for him. He makes me burn, and if I could’ve saved myself from his light, I would have done so a long time ago. There is no relief to be had, no darkness at the end of each day. There is only brightness, only him. Only what I can’t have. _

_ He spoke my name last night. He said it softly. I wanted to kiss my name onto his lips, wanted to capture the sweetness of his voice, the laughter in his breath, the distinct way he enunciated each syllable, each precious consonant. To think that a single word can sound so much like a hymn, like a symphony. Like a promise. _

_ “Henry,” he said. And I surrendered. He took my name on his lips and I resigned myself to my fate, to letting myself drown in the light that overflows from this dazzlingly bright wonder of a man.’ _

Alex froze. He blinked down at the page, reading the paragraph again and then again. ‘Henry.‘ It said Henry, didn’t it? Not Alexander, or Alex. It said Henry. That… that didn’t make any sense.

Alex quickly turned the page, skimming the content of the next scene without really paying attention to anything other than… Yes, there it was again: ’Henry’. And again and _again,_ scattered throughout the following pages. Every so often, the person writing the letters was referred to as Henry. It was… six times. At least in this particular section. Huh.

Alex flipped back to the first mention of Henry’s name. He frowned at the page. Why in the world would Henry write himself into his own book? And if he had, why hadn’t he properly distinguished between himself and Alexander Cadwell as narrators? Alex knew that the book hadn’t gone through editing yet, and had a strong suspicion that he was reading parts of the story  _ completely  _ out of order, but it just wasn’t reasonable that the perspective of the characters should be this difficult to grasp, even in a draft.

Unless… unless Henry hadn’t purposefully written himself into the story? It could’ve been a mistake, couldn’t it? Henry might’ve just… slipped up?

Alex’s heartbeat quickened. He flipped back even further, quickly skimming through scenes he’d already read, letting himself linger on the parts about the forest and the mist. He had been so preoccupied with trying to interpret why Henry had depicted Alex this way that he hadn’t, even for a second, stopped to consider whether or not Henry might actually be using Cadwell to describe somebody else entirely. Someone with the vocabulary to imagine himself in a dark forest, surrounded by mist and searching for a light that he had somehow convinced himself he wasn’t worthy of. That didn’t sound like Alex, did it? Not even a little bit. However, there was someone else whose reluctant smiles and carefully guarded expressions fit that description painfully well.

Alex quickly turned the pages back to where he’d left off and kept reading. The letters seemed to be getting longer and longer, but also less and less dark. The excruciating descriptions of grief and resentment were fewer and further in between—instead, the story seemed to have taken something of a new direction, growing brighter and more beautiful. Every so often, Alex would still spot another mention of Henry’s name, but towards the end of the book he couldn’t seem to find a single one. Instead, Cadwell seemed to be exploiting every opportunity to include tender well-wishes and ardent, purposeful closing words as he signed his own name at the end of each letter. _ ‘All my love, Alexander.’ ‘Wishing you were here, Alexander.’ ‘You are my everything, Alexander.’ _

_ ‘You’re overthinking this,’  _ said the Alexander on the page, and Alex nearly flinched. How many times had he told Henry exactly that?  _ ‘It’s really quite simple: I believe you. I want to believe you. I want to believe that you are right. I want to believe that this is the answer. That you are the answer. Please tell me that you are the answer. Please. _

_ I wish the mist wasn't so heavy and cold. I wish I could find my way back home.‘ _

Alex let the page he was holding fall back down on his bed. He stared at it, his eyes unfocused. He still felt confused about so many things—How many narrators did the book have? How many of them were simply different versions of Henry? Was the mist some sort of metaphor?—but when it came to the one thing that mattered the most, Alex felt that it was all finally, abundantly clear.

Henry.... cared for him. Didn't he? Desperately, helplessly and possibly against Henry's own judgement. And, God, maybe Henry had never actually hated Alex? Alex still remembered what Henry had said to him during one of their midnight chats in the kitchen, the words that Alex had wanted to believe so desperately. _ ‘My character, Alexander Cadwell? He isn’t based on you. He is genuinely, completely unrelated. I promise.’  _ Fuck. Henry had been telling the truth, hadn’t he?

Alex had to try and get through to Henry. He  _ had to. _ He probably owed Henry more than one apology, and he couldn’t bear the thought of Henry never knowing just how much Alex had come to feel for him. As soon as he had finished reading, Alex would go to him.

Except, when Alex got to the very last page and stumbled out of his room, the sunlight of the morning streaming through the windows as he took the stairs two steps at a time, it was already too late.

“What do you  _ mean, _ he’s left? Henry can’t have left.” Alex stepped closer towards Nora. He felt desperate. God, the sight he must make after not sleeping even for a minute, still dressed in his clothes from yesterday. “He can’t be gone, Nora, he  _ can’t.” _

“Deep breath, Alex.” Nora got up from the kitchen table. She placed a gentle hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I’m as surprised as you are. Henry sent me a text this morning saying he needed to get back to England urgently. He’ll be boarding his plane, right around now.”

_ “No.”  _ Alex’s voice came out more forcefully than he’d intended. His hands were shaking. “No, he can’t… I have to talk to him, Nora. I have to.”

He was on his phone before he’d finished the sentence. He didn’t have Henry’s number, but he quickly made his way to Henry’s Instagram. It was public, but not recently updated—suddenly, Alex remembered what Henry had mentioned about his accounts. ‘ _ I haven’t really been on, lately. On any social media. I may have deleted a ton of apps, right before I came here.’ _ Fuck. Direct messages probably wouldn’t reach Henry on any platform.

Alex looked up from his phone, his eyes frantically finding Nora’s. “You have Henry’s number. Can I have it? Please?”

“I’ll have to ask him,” Nora said firmly. She squeezed Alex’s shoulder gently. “I’ll text him right now, okay? I'll let you know as soon as he gets back to me. I’m sure it’ll be alright.”

Henry didn’t answer Nora for the next week. When he finally did, after Nora had sent him eleven texts and tried to call four times, he curtly informed Nora that he'd been very busy with work and that there could be nothing of significance for him and Alex to discuss.

* * *

When Henry composed his short, purposefully vague text to Nora, he found himself wishing that at least some part of it was true.

He'd been home just over a week. His living room was littered with half-empty takeout containers. There were four unread emails from Shaan in his inbox and a growing collection of increasingly concerned texts from Pez on his phone. Henry wasn’t sure whether or not he was quite ready for the sympathy festival that would inevitably occur once he gave in and sent some sign of life to Pez. He was reluctantly considering just getting it over with when his phone buzzed again—another text from Nora. And this time, she'd included two attachments. Two pictures.

_ ‘these are so fucking good. please tell me you're still on for this?’ _

Henry's hands shook as he opened the first attachment. He wasn't sure what would be more unbearable: if Alex's photographs of him were as amazing as he'd hoped, or if he was about to be faced with a bitterly disappointing reality check.

Henry's breath hitched as took in the first picture. It was… God, it was beautiful. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Because it wasn't a picture of Henry. It was a picture of Alex.

They'd taken Alex's picture out on the porch. The lake house, with it’s bright colors and smooth arches, made for a vibrant, intriguing background. To Alex’s right, the lake and the pier could be seen in the distance, giving the photo something of a duality between close and far away, colourful and simple. But Henry couldn’t take his eyes away from Alex. Alex’s eyes were shining with mirth, his lips curled into a satisfied, confident grin, his posture clearly effortless with every inch of his bare skin revealed for Henry to drink in. It was perfect. It was maybe Henry’s favourite photo of Alex ever, and God if that wasn’t saying something.

Henry let himself admire the picture for a few moments longer. He should probably delete it. Or add it to his  _ sunshine boy _ collection and try to forget about it. Or make it his background and his lock screen and look up the price for a tattoo. All perfectly viable options. Henry almost smiled to himself as he carefully closed the file and opened the second attachment from Nora.

There it was, finally. Alex's photograph of Henry. And fuck if it wasn't absolutely stunning.

Henry had never dreamed that he could ever look like… like  _ that.  _ He hadn't realized how the sunlight had shimmered on the lake in the background, how it had reflected in his eyes, making every part of him glow. Henry's pose even looked relaxed, his fingers loosely intertwined as he leaned on the railing, his head turned back to look at the camera. He remembered how flustered Alex had seemed during this part of the shoot, how it had made Henry feel powerful and really, really sexy. And the pictures did look hot, they  _ did, _ Henry would've been an idiot to deny it, but there was something else about them that made Henry feel strangely shaken.

Maybe it was his expression, how he was smiling with a sort of feigned sweetness, the curl of his lips purposefully flirtatious? Or maybe it was the look in his eyes, the easy confidence that Henry could see there but wasn't sure if he'd felt even in that moment, not really, not  _ truly. _ What did Henry—the  _ real  _ Henry, not this glossy, fabricated version of him—have to be even a little bit confident about? Had he ever had a real reason to smile like that, like he was desirable and wanted and perfectly aware of it? Like he was exactly where he was supposed to be and daring anyone to challenge him?

Henry closed the picture. He dropped his phone next to him on the couch and put his head in his hands. A heavy, uncomfortable, familiar weight settled in his stomach. His mind was spinning. God, he couldn’t go on like this, could he? Not anymore.

Abruptly, Henry reached for his laptop. He threw a page break into his draft and started typing. He didn't stop typing.

Hours later, he was startled by someone banging on his door. "Henry! Henry George Edward Fox, you let me in this instant! I've brought jaffa cakes and you should know I won't hesitate to just eat them all, there won't be any left for you, so you'd better—"

Pez seemed to lose some of his momentum when Henry actually opened the door. But only some of it—Pez's briefly relieved expression quickly shifted into a scowl. "Henry, you bloody  _ idiot. _ When's the last time you had a shower? Or a change of clothes? A minute of sleep?"

"How did you even know I was home?" Shit, Henry's voice was breaking. He was exhausted. He was so fucking tired of  _ everything. _ "Pez, I… I think I need your help."

"You always need my help, H." Pez's expression barely softened as he stepped inside, closing the door and letting the shopping bags he was carrying drop to the floor. "And I'll always be here for you, if you'll only let me. And right now, I need you to fucking  _ let me.  _ Come on, shower. Then tea."

"Pez," Henry tried weakly. Fuck, he was crying. He was standing in his hallway wearing the same pyjamas he'd changed into a week ago when he'd first gotten back home, tugging at Pez's arm, crying. He had really, truly lost it. "I think I’ve accidentally come out to Shaan? And to all of Windsor Publishing, I guess, by extension, and to… To anyone else who’s read my draft. And when the book comes out it’ll be the whole world, and I… I don’t think I can wait that long. I think I need to come out sooner. Maybe right now? I don’t know exactly, but I do know that I need to—”

“What you  _ need,” _ Pez interrupted briskly, "Is to shower and eat something and clear your head. Anything else will have to wait. If you’re coming out, you know I’ll be the first to support you, but before that I’d like to make sure that you don’t fucking kill yourself over this. Okay? Come on, Henry. I promise the world and all of your problems will still be here after you’ve had a shower and a cup of tea.”

Unfortunately, Pez was exactly right. Even though Henry actually did feel better when he padded back into the living room, dressed in clean pyjamas and with his hair still damp, and even though the whole world seemed a somewhat brighter place when Pez smiled and handed him a fresh cup of earl grey, none of his problems had solved themselves in his absence.

“Alright.” Pez guided Henry to the couch, which was now miraculously free of old takeout containers. Henry obediently took the seat next to Pez, smiling when Pez immediately got comfortable on his end of the couch and pushed his feet gently against Henry’s legs. The point of contact was soothing. “Let’s hear it, Hen. What’s this business about coming out to Shaan?”

Henry smiled weakly. “Well, I sent him my draft. My latest draft. Or it used to be my latest—I’ve written more, since. Anyhow, I think it’s painfully obvious that much of it is based on my life. And I’m not even trying to be subtle with the pronouns, or with… With the parts that are about Alex. Everyone’s going to know. It’ll be out there for anyone to read. I’ve sort of painted myself into a metaphorical corner, here.”

“Fair enough,” Pez allowed. He was watching Henry’s expression closely. “You don’t  _ have to _ publish it, though. You know that, right? You don’t have to be open about that part of yourself unless it’s what you really want. And you’ve always insisted that it’s too big a risk?”

Henry ran a hand through his hair. He sighed. “Yes, well. I think these past few weeks have changed how I think about… about risks? Or maybe about what I might risk missing out on, if I don’t do this for myself.”

“Ah,” Pez said. He’d started to smile. “I was waiting for this. How are things with our dear Alexander?”

“Not great, actually,” Henry confessed quietly. He tried not to think about Nora’s ominous request to give Alex his number. He was so thankful to her for letting him say no. After all those awful things he’d said to Alex, and after Alex had read the book, had found out exactly how pathetically desperate Henry was for even a sliver of Alex’s affections… Henry couldn’t bear the thought of giving Alex the chance to hold it all against him. Nothing good could come of that. “He, uh. He’s probably very angry with me, right now. I doubt he will even want to be friends after everything that’s happened.”

Pez frowned. “Really? But I thought you two were getting, y’know. Closer?”

“We were,” Henry agreed softly. “And it was just… For a while, it was so _good,_ Pez. I think I’d forgotten what it’s like to smile that often? What it’s like to see someone I like smile because of me, to know that they’re smiling because I made them happy, that was just… kind of everything. It felt like nothing I’ve allowed myself to feel in years. I’ve tried to, you know? I’ve really tried to keep reminding myself that I deserve to be happy. But I don’t think that I have actually, truly believed that until this past month.”

“Oh, Henry.” Pez’s voice had turned thick. His expression was one of frustrated fondness. “Of course you deserve to be happy. How is that even a question?”

“I guess it shouldn’t be,” Henry agreed shakily. “And I think I’ve been decent at reminding myself, but there’s a big difference between chasing rare glimpses of joy and being actually, permanently happy. These past few weeks have made me realize what the second alternative might feel like, and I just… That’s what I want. It’s what I  _ need. _ And with the way I’ve tried to live my life so far, I haven’t been able to get there. Not once. And I don’t think I’ll be able to get there unless I manage to change some part of the math, here, because right now it’s just not adding up.”

Pez was quiet for a moment—a very rare occurrence, as Henry was well aware. He was meeting Henry’s eyes steadily, his expression quietly contemplative. “And you think if you came out, the math would add up better?”

“I think that’s something I’ve known for a while, now. I think it’s why I wrote the book the way I did. So I’d have to just put it all out there and be done with it. I think I  _ wanted  _ to paint myself into this corner.” Henry offered Pez a reassuring smile. “This is probably the most carefully considered spontaneous decision I’ve made in my life, if you can believe it.”

“Well, I do love a good oxymoron,” Pez joked. He offered Henry a fond, actually proud smile in return. “Hen, you do realize you have to let me read it? As soon as possible. I’m your best friend  _ and  _ your agent, you can’t expect me to…”

Pez trailed off, clearly startled—Henry had already reached for his laptop and was practically shoving it into Pez’s hands.

“Read it,” Henry urged him. He grinned slightly. “It’s, um, it’s really coming along. It’s extremely rough, I have so much to edit and rewrite and structure, but it’s getting there. I’m getting it there.”

Pez scrolled to the top of the document, raising both eyebrows in surprise.  _ “‘The Waterloo Letters’… _ You changed the title?”

“Yes, well.” Henry attempted a shrug. “I mean, it is a completely different book. I thought it made sense.”

Pez blinked, very slowly. “It’s  _ what?” _

Henry ducked his head. “I, er, I’ve rewritten it? All of it. That’s why it’s rough—it’s, you know, only the first draft.”

“Henry,” Pez exclaimed. His tone was somewhere right in between reproachful and ecstatic. “You didn’t!”

“I did.” Henry pulled at a loose thread on his pyjamas. “Like I said, lots to edit. And Shaan is probably going to kill me. Or just drop the project entirely? There’s no way I can have it ready to print on time. And you know, the weirdest thing is, that doesn’t even feel important right now? I wrote it. I  _ like  _ it. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. I can worry about the rest later.”

“Look at you, taking control over your own narrative. Over your whole goddamn life.” Pez’s hopelessly fond smile from before was back in full force. “So… What now?”

Henry was quiet for a moment. He already knew the answer to that question. He didn’t like it, but at least he finally felt completely certain. “I guess… My family. I’ve got to tell them before I tell the world."

“Right. Okay.” Pez set aside the laptop, scooting a little closer. He squeezed Henry’s arm. “You really think they’ll react badly?”

“Philip will,” Henry said calmly. He didn’t need to hesitate on that one. “Gran will. Mum, I’m not sure. Bea will be on my side, at least, so that’s something.”

“Henry, your mother loves you.” Pez’s grip on his arm tightened. “I know she’s been distant since your dad passed away, but she  _ loves  _ you. She’ll just want you to be happy.”

“We’ll see.” Henry closed his eyes. “The thing is, Mum loves Philip too. And if… If he ends up cutting me off, or if I decide that I’m done with him? She might feel like she needs to choose. Like I’m the one making her choose. And I’m not so sure that’s going to work out in my favour.”

“Fucking Philip,” Pez muttered. Henry was starting to doubt whether or not Pez would ever let go of his arm. “I will be there for you, and so will Bea. We’re going to get you through this, okay?”

“No, I know.” Henry opened his eyes again. He actually managed to offer Pez a small, reassuring smile. “I know. It’s because of you and… and everyone else who’s supported me that I’m even considering this in the first place.”

“We’re here for you,” Pez repeated firmly. Then, for some reason, he started to grin. “You know, it’s obvious that there’s something you’re not telling me about your recent interactions with your American sweetheart, but I do quite like the effect he’s evidently had on you these past few weeks. This new brand of fearless chic you’ve adopted feels so right, Hen. You should clearly keep the dear Alexander around.”

Henry grimaced. “I’m pretty sure Alex wouldn’t want  _ me  _ around, Pez. I kind of… pushed him away? I said some things to make him go away.”

“Ah.” It should probably be insulting, how completely unsurprised Pez sounded. “No romantic strolls in the moonlight, then? Passionate kisses in secluded corners? Lovestruck whispers in his ear as you parted ways?”

“There, er. There may have been a kiss.” Henry tried not to wince at the memory. The kiss had been perfect. It had been everything he’d dreamed and more. It was what had come after that he was trying to make himself forget. “Just the one. That was kind of when I told him to leave me alone? Sort of in a forever sense.”

“Jesus, Henry, you don’t do things by halves.” Pez’s smile had turned sympathetic. "So what I'm getting is that we're not actually mad at Alexander? That's not why you got out of there so quickly? Because if there was any reason to thrash talk the chap, you should know I'd be delighted to have a go. Just say the word."

"No," Henry said quietly. "No, Alex has been… lovely. He's been so much nicer than I've deserved."

"Well. Maybe there will come a time when you'll feel ready to reach out to him again?"

“Maybe,” Henry agreed vaguely, mostly for Pez’s sake. “But for now, I believe I have other people to reach out to. Let’s see how surprised Philip and Gran will be when I actually show up to their weekly family dinner.”

* * *

When Alex stepped off the plane at Heathrow, he had eight missed calls from Nora and more than twenty texts from June. It was raining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're really getting somewhere in this one, huh? Alex hopping on a plane!! Henry taking control over his narrative!!! I'm _very_ excited for what's about to happen after this!
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://everwitch-magiks.tumblr.com/), come yell with me about all things Alex and Henry! ♡♡♡


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many many thanks to [failing_at_fangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failing_at_fangirling/pseuds/failing_at_fangirling) for beta reading! ♡

“Shit. Fucking _shit.”_

The rain wasn’t letting up. Alex hadn’t exactly factored in a literal flood falling from the sky when he had packed for his impulsive trip to London. If you could even say that he had packed—he’d thrown his laptop, a change of clothes and his passport into his backpack. Then he’d been off. Nora had tried to call him almost twenty times now, but Alex hadn’t yet picked up. He kept telling himself that it was because he was trying to save the battery on his phone. Which was, unfortunately, true—he was well below ten percent now, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to navigate London without it. Or, perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to find his way to Henry without it.

Not that Alex’s grand plan of finding Henry was going all that well in the first place.

Maybe the whole problem was that Alex didn’t really _have_ a plan. He didn’t know Henry’s address and wasn’t certain of how he was supposed to figure it out. He’d considered giving in and calling Nora back, but chances were very high that she’d yell at him and very low that she’d actually offer him any help on his foolishly romantic quest.

Currently, Alex was staring dejectedly at the locked door to the headquarters of Windsor Publishing. The office had closed for the day. Of course it had. And really, even if Alex had managed to get there before nine in the evening, what were the odds that Henry’s publisher would’ve just handed out Henry’s private address to some drenched, American stranger? This was so fucking stupid. Why in the world had Alex thought—

“Alexander?”

Alex turned around. The voice wasn’t familiar, nor was the person to whom it belonged. It was a man with his hair buzzed short and colored an interesting shade of purple, in a very distinct and decidedly chic contrast to his dark skin and brown eyes. He was wearing a grey raincoat and carrying a large, neon pink umbrella. He looked… infuriatingly dry. And also startlingly curious.

“Claremont-Diaz, right?” the man added. He took a step forward. “Bit of a coincidence, finding you here.”

Alex sighed. He did not have time for this. “Look man, this isn’t a good time for a selfie, or—”

“You’re looking for Henry, aren’t you?”

Alex stared at him. What?

“Perhaps I should introduce myself.” The man grinned slightly as he held out a hand. “Percy Okonjo, Henry’s agent, hello. Good to meet you.”

“Oh,” Alex said faintly. He automatically shook Percy’s hand, wincing as he realized that he was mostly just getting this guy wet. Great. “Uh, hi. How did you… Why would I be looking for Henry?”

“That’s precisely what I’d like to know.” Percy tilted his head a little to the side. There was something rather unsettling about the way his eyes narrowed. “What, exactly, is your deal?"

Alex hesitated. How the fuck was he supposed to explain himself to Henry’s agent, of all people? “I just… need to contact Henry. It’s, uh. He was a part of this project that I’m involved in, I’m not sure if he’s mentioned, it’s a campaign for Vogue—”

“See, I don’t think that’s it,” Percy suddenly interrupted. He tilted his head the other way. “If this was a professional enquiry, you could’ve just sent an email.”

Damnit. “Look, man, I don’t know how well you know Henry, but I do really need to get in touch with him. Please.”

For some reason, that made Percy smile. “You know, I think I might need to re-introduce myself.” Inexplicably, he held out his hand again. “Hi. Pez Okonjo, Henry’s best mate. _Very_ excited to _finally_ meet you.”

Alex stared at his outstretched hand, blinking slowly. What?

“That should tell you everything you need to know about how much Henry has told me,” Percy—no, Pez—continued pleasantly. He seemed annoyingly unbothered by the fact that Alex hadn’t taken his offered hand. “So let’s go back to my questions, hm? What’s your deal? Why are you here on our side of the pond, wandering about in this little drizzle in a shockingly poor attempt to track down the dearest Henry?”

“This is not a _little drizzle,”_ Alex disagreed firmly—that, at least, he was certain of. “It’s, fuck, it’s pouring rain.”

“It’s London.” Pez smiled again in a way that Alex was beginning to recognize as friendly, rather than mocking. “Honestly, what’d you expect?”

“I… I don’t know.” Alex ran a hand through his very, very wet hair. Fucking _fuck._ “I just… Look, I do really need to talk to Henry. I promise I’m not stalking him or anything, I just... He left without saying anything. And there’s so much that I need to say to him, you’ve no idea.”

“Oh, I think I might have some idea,” Pez interjected, his eyes twinkling. “But go on. I believe you were about to make a case for why I should help you on this endeavour?”

“I was?” Alex asked dumbly. “What do you… will you help me?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here.” Pez held up a hand. “Why _should_ I help you? Would Henry even be happy to see you? What if he’s not?”

“Well, I… I guess I’d leave?” Shit. Alex hadn't exactly prepared himself for an interrogation like this. Was he really supposed to have comprehensible, logical reasons for his entirely impulsive decision to just get on a plane and hope for the best? “It’s, you know, it’s an absolute possibility that this will be a total disaster. But either way, I know that I need to at least _try_ to get through to Henry, and that’s because I will definitely go a bit crazy if I… if I have to make myself let him go like this. I might not know Henry as well as you do, but I do know myself. And I know that I can’t just give up on him. I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”

Alex averted his gaze to the ground. Shit. He had just admitted several things, hadn’t he? Indirectly, but still. And he’d done so to this complete fucking stranger who claimed to be Henry’s best friend, in absolutely pouring rain. Fuck. What was he even _doing_ here? What if Henry wouldn’t even—

“Alexander, dearest, I have good news for you.” Pez’s softened tone made Alex look up abruptly. Pez looked… surprisingly pleased. “I was planning on getting some things from the office, but that can wait. I’m giving you a ride. Henry’s flat is no more than fifteen minutes from here.”

“Really?” Alex exclaimed. “I mean, oh my God, _thank you._ Seriously, I owe you so much. I, uh, I’m so sorry I’ll probably get your car all wet.”

“You can thank me by being very, _very_ patient with Henry when you see him.” For some reason, Pez’s expression shifted into something slightly more serious. “He’s having a bit of a week. We’re actually quite officially in crisis mode, although this time it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Alex felt a sharp pang in his chest. “Wait, what’s going on? Is Henry okay?”

“See, this is precisely why I’m about to let you turn my Porsche into a literal puddle on wheels,” Pez told Alex pleasantly. “As for the aforementioned crisis, it’s not my story to tell. Either Henry will let you know what’s going on, or he won’t. Now come on. Car’s this way.”

Alex couldn’t stop fidgeting during the short ride over to Henry’s apartment. Suddenly, he felt terrified. He’d come all this way and was about to finally have his chance to speak to Henry... What if he screwed it all up? What if he’d misread everything in Henry’s novel, and Henry actually wanted _nothing_ to do with Alex, and—

“We’re here.” Pez stopped the car. He made a gesture towards the apartment complex in front of them. “Second floor, first flat on your right.”

“Alright. Thank you.” Alex got out of the car, then turned around with what he hoped was an appropriately thankful smile. He _was_ unbelievably grateful—he was just also unfathomably terrified. “I, uh, I guess I might see you.”

“Let’s hope so.” For some reason, Pez grinned slightly. “Just FYI, you look like a jet-lagged zombie who got drenched in the rain. Best of luck, mate.”

Then he reached out for the car door, and closed it. Alex gaped after him as he drove off. Henry sure had an interesting taste in friends.

Alex quickly made his way into the building—it was still fucking pouring—and climbed two flights of stairs. There it was, the first flat on the right, the name ‘Fox’ just above the doorbell. He’d made it. He had really made it. Before he could overthink things and realize why this whole operation was a colossal mistake, Alex forced himself to take a deep, steadying breath, and ring the doorbell.

A suspiciously long time passed before he heard a sound within the apartment: footsteps. Footsteps approaching. The door opened, just slightly, and Henry’s blue eyes peered back towards Alex.

“Uh. Hello.” Alex attempted a smile. It didn’t go particularly well. “Surprise?”

Henry watched him quietly for a moment. His expression looked… strangely blank. And not in a way that Alex was at all familiar with. It was so unlike the carefully orchestrated indifference that Alex had truly detested during their very first meeting and also entirely different from every quietly composed stare that Henry had fixed him with since. No, this strange version of Henry just looked… unfeeling. Empty.

“Henry, can I… can I come in?” Alex tried hesitantly. “Or can we at least talk? Please. I know you probably don’t even want to see me, but—”

“Alex?” Henry suddenly interrupted. He blinked twice. “Alex, you’re… you’re here?”

Alex paused. Henry had already been staring at him for, what, a good ten seconds? Was it such a shock that Alex had appeared outside of his door that Henry had started to lose his sense of reality?

“I’m here,” Alex said slowly, watching with growing concern as Henry’s expression shifted slightly, a flicker of emotion passing through his eyes. Oh. There he was. Except… Alex studied Henry for a moment longer, belatedly registering the fact that Henry’s eyes were red in the corners, and his cheeks were flushed, and… Oh, shit. Henry had been crying, hadn’t he? He had been crying, but had still answered the door, his expression vacant in a way that was pretty fucking alarming. Suddenly, Alex wished that he had tried to get more information out of Pez about Henry’s so-called ongoing crisis. _‘Henry’s having a bit of a week.’_ “Henry, are you alright? Can I please come in? Please, you… you’re scaring me a little.”

“I’m fine,” Henry said quietly. He didn’t make any move to open the door. “Alex, I… I don’t understand. Are you really here?”

“I’m here,” Alex repeated gently. He had never been so afraid to overwhelm, well... anyone. “Henry, could you please let me in? Please. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want you to be alone right now.”

“I’m… I’m fine.” Henry closed his eyes for a moment. “It’ll pass. It always does. I’ll be fine.”

“Henry, please,” Alex tried softly. “I… Look, I just don’t want you to be alone. You don’t need to talk to me or even pretend I’m here, just… just let me help you.”

Henry abruptly shook his head, his eyes still closed. “You really don’t want to help me, Alex. Trust me.”

“No, I do. I really do.” Fucking _fuck._ “Henry, please. If you won’t let me in, can you at least call someone? Maybe Pez, or someone else you trust? Please, I just can’t leave you alone like this.” 

Henry slowly opened his eyes again. His gaze seemed a little more focused as he studied Alex’s expression for a moment. “You know Pez?”

“I, uh, I may have met him. Just now?” God, that wasn’t a good explanation, but Alex really didn’t have a better one. “He told me I look like a drenched, jet-lagged zombie. Which, _true,_ but he didn’t need to say it.”

Somehow, inexplicably, that made Henry’s lips curl into a brief, startled smile. “That’s Pez for you. Loyal to a fault, and always looking for a good laugh.”

“At my expense, in this case.” Alex offered Henry a hesitant smile in return. “He seemed decent enough. Do you want to call him? I’m sure he’d come as soon as he could, if you—”

“No,” Henry cut in unsteadily. He looked down. “Absolutely not. I’ve taken up enough of his time lately, you’ve no idea.”

“Right.” Alex nodded slowly. He tried desperately to think of another solution. What more could he do? “Look, you obviously don’t have to let me in, but I would be very, very grateful if you did. I just… I can’t leave you. Not like this.”

Henry glanced up towards Alex again, their eyes meeting briefly. The look in Henry’s eyes wasn’t quite as vacant as it had been before. Instead, he simply looked... exhausted. God, Alex wanted to hug him. Alex never wanted to leave him again.

“Fine,” Henry finally said, one short, decisive, quiet syllable. “Fine, just… I’m a little out of it. I’m not going to be very good company.”

Alex exhaled, relief flooding through him. “Don’t even worry about that, please.”

Henry took a slow step back, pulling the door open.

Henry’s apartment was… quite nice. And also something of a mess. It had an open floor plan, with a sleek, modern kitchen to the right and a lounge area to the left. It definitely looked lived in, given that the kitchen table was buried under dirty dishes and takeout containers, and almost every available surface in the living room was cluttered with uneven stacks of printed pages, but it didn’t seem very personal or particularly homey. Something about the white, almost sterile colour scheme of both rooms seemed rather… clinical.

“I haven’t really, er. There’s been a lot going on.” Henry gestured helplessly towards, well, sort of the entire place. “Do you want to… I’m not sure if I… Alex, you’re all wet.”

Ah. _Now_ he’d noticed.

“I’m fine,” Alex said firmly. And well, he was actually kind of shivering, but he had something much, much more important to focus on: Henry. “Do you want some tea? I’m going to make you tea, okay?”

“You’re going to create a puddle in my kitchen, is more like it,” Henry observed dryly. He had crossed his arms, and his expression was still mostly closed off, but something like concern was beginning to take shape in his eyes. “You need… Do you want a towel? I have towels in the bathroom, I can—”

“I’ll find a towel,” Alex assured him. Impulsively, he reached out for Henry’s arm. “Please, just… just make yourself comfortable. Okay? I’ll figure out tea, and a towel. Promise.”

Henry glanced down to where Alex was touching him. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay. Okay.”

“Good,” Alex exhaled. “Okay. I’ll be right with you.”

A few minutes later, Alex had, in fact, figured out both tea and towels. He had also changed into his only other outfit, which was thankfully slightly more dry than what he’d been wearing in the rain, and he had quickly checked the condition of his poor, damp laptop (it seemed fine). With a grey, fluffy towel wrapped around his shoulders and two steaming mugs in his hands, Alex joined Henry on the couch.

“Thank you,” Henry mumbled as he accepted the mug of tea Alex offered him. He smiled faintly as he took a sip. “Do you even drink tea?”

“Sometimes.” Alex gulped down a mouthful, not even caring that it burned his tongue. It was warm. He was _dry,_ and the tea was _warm._ The world seemed to be slowly righting itself again. Even Henry looked a little better as he curled up next to Alex on the couch, taking another sip of his tea, his lips shaping into another brief smile. It was almost as if Henry really found the taste of Earl Grey that comforting. “Are you… how are you feeling?”

“Well. Not fantastic.” Henry shrugged, his eyes carefully fixed on the mug in his hands. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.”

“You really don’t need to apologize.” Alex tried to make his tone as reassuring as possible, completely free of judgement. He didn’t want to offer Henry anything but support. “Can I… can I help in any way?”

“I don’t know, honestly.” Henry shrugged again. “I usually just wait it out. Sometimes, if Pez is here, he’ll… well. He’s not here. But I mean, I’ve muddled through on my own plenty of times. It’ll pass.”

Alex bit his lip. God. He didn’t want to pry, but… “What would Pez do?”

Henry looked up abruptly. He seemed to realize the implication in Alex’s question. “He, uh. He’d stay close? He’d be quiet, but close.”

“I’m historically terrible at quiet,” Alex told him slowly, stalling for time as his thoughts whirled around the other part of what Henry had just said. _Stay close._ Alex wasn’t Pez, so maybe it wouldn’t be the same, but... “Do you want… I’m sorry if I’m overstepping, but would it help if I was closer? Or do you want more space?”

Henry hesitated briefly, his eyes searching Alex’s with a sudden clarity that was actually so relieving, given how vacant Henry’s eyes had been before. Then Henry nodded, very slowly. Before Alex could ask which question he was agreeing to, Henry quietly held out a hand.

Alright.

Alex carefully took Henry’s hand in his. It was… nice. Which wasn’t really the point right now, but if Alex had known that same morning that he’d end the day on Henry’s couch, drinking tea with their hands intertwined, well… Alex wouldn’t exactly have been disappointed.

“I get panic attacks,” Henry told him quietly.

Alex looked over towards him, startled. Henry was watching both of their hands, carefully avoiding Alex’s eyes as he continued speaking. “It’s not the most dignified thing. I’ve been to therapy, loads of it, and I’m so much better now, but… but when things get bad, when something goes really wrong or when I’m under a lot of stress, then it’s a question of time. I just shut down.”

Impulsively, Alex squeezed Henry’s hand in his. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that.”

“It’s better now,” Henry repeated firmly. “It used to be, God, it used to be so often. Now it’s reserved mostly for, you know. Actual disasters.”

“Pez mentioned that you’ve been going through some things this week,” Alex said, not quite making it a question. He wasn’t here to pry. He was here to help. “I hope things can look up, soon.”

“I guess we’ll see.” Henry sighed. “I came out to my family.”

“...Oh.” Alex stared at him, slowly starting to connect the dots. “And they… they reacted badly?”

“Some of them, yeah.” Henry grimaced. “My grandmother did, and my brother, and it’s not yet clear if my mother will end up listening to them or sticking by me.”

Fuck. Alex couldn’t even imagine what he’d have done if he had told his family, and they’d… “You shouldn’t have to go through something like that. I’m so sorry.”

“It is what it is,” Henry said, his voice surprisingly firm. “I don’t regret it. I’ve kept this part of myself hidden for years and years in fear of their disapproval, and I just… I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep living my life like that.”

“You’ll be okay,” Alex told him softly. “I’m sure you will.”

“Eventually, maybe.” Henry sipped his tea again, for some reason turning Alex’s hand over in his. Then he pulled his own hand back. “Alex. Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Alex said quickly. He swallowed as Henry looked to face him with a contemplative gaze, one that was undeniably present in the moment. Tea, and time, and maybe actually Alex’s presence next to Henry seemed to have eased some of Henry’s earlier distress. Alex couldn’t help but take comfort in that, even if it meant that Henry had just very deliberately pulled away from him. “You must have a lot of those. Questions, that is. I know you weren’t expecting me to—”

“Why are you here?”

Alex paused. There it was again, that agonizingly guarded expression Henry so often directed towards Alex. Almost as if Henry was trying to protect himself from whatever he thought would happen if he let Alex see even a sliver of his real emotions.

“I’m guessing you read my book,” Henry continued carefully. “And I’m guessing you have things to say about it. Which, if you do, could you just… just get it over with? As I’m sure you’ve figured out, I’m not exactly ecstatic over the prospect of this conversation, but if you want to get some… some closure, or answers? Then I’ll hear you out.”

“I don’t… Closure isn’t really the right word.” Alex looked down at the mug in his own hands. Suddenly, he remembered all the reasons why he had been so terrified to ring the doorbell. “But yes, I did read your book.”

“Right.” Henry shifted restlessly next to him. “And then you… came here?”

“I mean, I wanted to call you, but yeah. I came here.” Alex took a deep breath. “I wanted to apologize.”

“What?” Henry exclaimed sharply. “Whatever for?”

Henry’s tone was colored with surprise. Alex looked over towards him to find Henry’s expression suddenly unguarded, and more importantly completely bewildered. Which wasn’t the reaction he had expected at all.

“For… for everything?” Alex told him slowly. “I, uh. I actually made a list. Or well, I’ve made a list of things to say to you, but ‘I’m sorry’ is basically items one, two and three.”

“That can’t be right,” Henry disagreed immediately, his tone oddly defensive. Was he actually getting angry on Alex’s behalf? “Let’s hear it. I’m sure you will find that all those things were entirely my fault, one way or another.”

“You know, I don’t think so.” Alex smiled. “But okay. Let me get the list, I’ll read it to you.”

Henry’s gaze followed Alex as he went over to his backpack and retrieved the folded, only _slightly_ damp paper from one of the inner pockets. All things considered, it wasn’t in terrible condition.

“Here we are.” Alex sat himself back down on the couch. He cleared his throat lightly. “I’m just going to… take it from the top? So, item number one is: the tweets that I posted about you. I’m really sorry that I ever wrote, well... any of that.”

“The tweets you posted after we first met?” Henry asked. He was already shaking his head. “Alex, you wrote those tweets after I had literally attacked you with a cupcake. You had every right to be angry at me.”

“I didn’t, actually,” Alex told him gently. “Henry, when I wrote those things about you, I… I was such a mess. I had read what everyone was claiming about your writing and how it related to me, and I reacted in a way that I shouldn’t have. I was angry and disappointed, and I posted those tweets to get back at you. And nothing you had done gave me the right to do any of that, to lash out like that and try to hurt you. I was completely out of line, and I’m sorry. I wish I’d handled it differently.”

“You had a right to be upset, at least,” Henry disagreed. He was frowning. “Please, let’s not pretend that I wasn’t a complete jerk to you at that fundraiser. You came up to me, and I… I didn’t know what to do. I panicked, for reasons that you had no way of knowing, and so I tried to brush you off, and then you just wouldn’t _go away,_ and I… I’m not proud of that, of any of it. It’s something that I also wish I had handled differently. But I didn’t, and of course my actions that day made you upset. I don’t blame you for that.”

“All the same, I regret how I handled that,” Alex told him firmly. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that had to be your first impression of me.”

Something like a smile passed over Henry’s expression. “I wouldn’t worry about that, if I were you. But do you… you said something about three items on your list?”

“Three things I’m sorry for,” Alex corrected him. “You could say that the list continues, after.”

“There can’t _possibly_ be two more things you want to apologize for.”

“No, there are!” Alex insisted stubbornly. God. This conversation wasn’t going at all how he’d imagined it. Maybe it was time to actually get to the point. “Let me just read them out for you. Number two is: I’m sorry I didn’t back off as soon as you asked me to, last time. I was so desperate to try to understand what was going on with you but you clearly wanted me to just leave, and while that’s what I eventually did I think I should’ve given you space much sooner. That was shitty of me. And number three is: I’m so, _so_ sorry that I didn’t believe you when you tried to tell me the truth about your writing, and Alexander Cadwell, and… and everything.”

Henry tilted his head to the side. “You said that you didn’t _not_ believe me, then,” he reminded Alex quietly. His tone was coloured with disbelief as he continued. “Does that mean you believe me now? Really?”

“Henry, of course I… I mean, I’ve read your draft. Your new book.” Alex’s heartbeat was quickly picking up. He glanced down at the page in his hands again. “It’s, um, it’s actually item number four: I think I understand everything, now. I was so confused when I started reading, because I was still trying to figure out why you’d written Cadwell the way you had if you were basing him on me, but… but that’s just the thing. Alexander Cadwell isn't me, is he? He never was me.”

“That’s right,” Henry agreed quietly. “My publisher actually wanted me to make him you, in the sequel. Or to at least write him as if he _could_ be you, and more importantly write him in a very favourable way in order to smooth things over with, well, with you and your followers. That's why I was rewriting the book in the first place. But I just… I _tried_ to make him you, but I just couldn't. Cadwell was already so established in my mind. I couldn't change the very purpose of the character."

“But your new book is still _about_ me,” Alex said slowly, meeting Henry’s eyes. He felt a little braver when Henry didn’t look away, his gaze meeting Alex’s nervously but steadily. “Isn’t it? And Alexander Cadwell, he’s… he’s you. Isn’t he?”

“He is,” Henry admitted quietly. He still wasn’t looking away from Alex. “He always was."

“You redeemed him, in the sequel,” Alex pointed out gently. God, he wanted to take Henry’s hand again, wanted to protect Henry from every painful thing in the universe. “He’s a villain in _What Happens In Rio_ , but in _The Waterloo Letters_ he fights his own demons. He forgives himself, and he falls deeply in love.”

“No,” Henry said abruptly, his tone suddenly firm. He shifted on the couch, his hand grazing Alex’s gently. “Cadwell was always in love. Always.”

Alex stared at him, his heart beating impossibly fast. What?

“Cadwell is me,” Henry continued, speaking slowly and very deliberately. “And I used to think of him as only one part of me. When I first created him, I constructed him as an embodiment of all the worst things that plagued me, of anger and resentment and grief. My father had died a few months earlier, and writing _What Happens In Rio_ was… a very personal journey. The darkness in it came from a very real place.”

“I... didn’t know that.” Alex frowned. “And I’ve read _Rio_ so many times.”

Henry blinked slowly. “You have? Really?”

“It’s my favourite book,” Alex confessed quietly. He actually had to look away from Henry’s shocked expression for a moment. “It’s a part of why… When I thought you hated me, inexplicably, after avoiding crossing paths with me for years? It absolutely crushed me.”

“I didn’t know that,” Henry said gently, repeating Alex’s words from before. “God, Alex, I… I had no idea.”

“It’s fine.” Alex waved a hand. “You couldn’t know. But, you were… You were saying something about how you thought Cadwell was only one part of you?”

“I did,” Henry agreed. “I never… I think there was one component that overtook all the rest, one thing that I hadn’t even quite realized was there until I had to start writing from his perspective. Somewhere within that ruthlessness and grief, there was all this guilt. Guilt about not being able to help my father when he was sick, and about not being able to help my mother after he’d died, and about selfishly wanting to burden my remaining family with… with the fact that I’m gay, when I knew that it would only hurt them even further.”

“Henry, no.” Alex couldn’t help himself—he reached out for Henry’s hand. “God, none of that was your fault. It can't have been. And it’s definitely not your responsibility to shield your family from who you really are—that’s them hurting _you,_ not the other way around.”

“No, I know,” Henry agreed softly. He actually smiled briefly, his eyes wandering down to Alex’s hand in his. “I really do know that now. Writing _The Waterloo Letters_ has been… a process. A really good process. Even if it’s felt like a bloody mess, and even though I utterly failed to make Alexander Cadwell into any semblance of you, I… I realized that I didn’t actually need to make him you, in order to redeem him. And that, in order to redeem him, I needed to forgive him. I needed Cadwell to forgive himself.”

“He really does, at the end of the book.” Alex glanced down at their hands. Henry still hadn’t let him go. He didn’t seem to _want_ to let Alex go. “Henry, you… you said that Cadwell was always in love.”

"That's right," Henry acknowledged. He looked up again, meeting Alex's eyes hesitantly. "I know it’s… a little pathetic. But it’s the truth.”

"It’s not pathetic," Alex disagreed shakily. He let himself take a breath. "Is any of that, of all that aching longing and those flashes of happiness… is any of that about me?”

That made Henry smile in a way that seemed bittersweet. He held Alex's gaze as he spoke. "Christ, Alex, all of it. Every word. Ever since the beginning.”

Alex exhaled slowly. His mind was spinning. “Since what beginning?”

“Since I started writing,” Henry said slowly, as though that should’ve been entirely obvious. “Since _Rio._ There isn’t a word I’ve written about love that I didn’t write thinking of you.”

Alex stared at him, blinking. His mind felt entirely blank. That couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t be, Henry hadn’t even… “But you didn’t even _know_ me, then, we hadn’t met, you can’t have—”

“I knew of you,” Henry interrupted softly. He lowered his gaze again, his cheeks quickly turning pink. “And I… I know it’s ridiculous, but I always wanted to know you. Ever since I first saw your picture in a magazine and picked it up just to find out who you were, I’ve been falling more desperately in love with the mere idea of you every single day. It's been miserable, and exhausting, and for a very long time it was my one source of happiness."

"No," Alex said faintly. He squeezed Henry's hand in his. "That's… that can't be."

“I know it’s ridiculous,” Henry repeated. He smiled weakly. “But it’s the truth. It’s why I avoided you for so long, and why I struggled to keep you at arm’s length when we eventually did meet. I wasn’t at liberty to… to let myself have you. I was so convinced that I could never make choices about my life in a way that reflected who I truly am. That I couldn’t allow myself to be out.”

“Henry,” Alex breathed out. His heart was beating desperately in his chest. “God, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you ever felt that you had to do that to yourself.”

“I’m done with that, now.” Henry glanced up at Alex again. “Meeting you, finally, it’s been so good for me. It’s made me realize that I can’t make myself live the rest of my life clinging to some far-away fantasy of happiness. I’ve learned what it’s like to let myself make choices that feel true to who I am. And even if… even though I can’t have you, I still know myself better. I’m braver, and I have more of a reason to fight, so—”

“Why can’t you have me?” Alex blurted out.

Henry stared at him. His hand in Alex’s hand twitched, almost like he was about to pull back. “Alex, I don’t… I’d be an idiot to presume that you could have any lingering attachment for me. I’ve fought so hard to push you away. I don’t expect anything from you.”

“No, please, don’t even say that.” Alex let his long-forgotten list drop to the floor, turning fully towards Henry. It was clearly time to go a little off script. “Jesus, Henry, I… I don’t have words for how much I want you. But I do. I want you so much. I’ve never fallen for anyone this fast and that fucking scares me, but it is what it is and all I want is to have you, so please, let me—”

“Say that again,” Henry suddenly interrupted.

“... Which part?”

Henry’s eyes were clear blue and focused. His grip on Alex’s hand tightened, as though he never planned to pull away. “The part about… You said, you’ve been falling. That part.”

“I have,” Alex said gently. He reached out for Henry’s other hand, brushing a thumb over his knuckles. “I’ve been falling for you. And if I could have any part of you—all of you, or some of you, a lover or a friend, as much as you’re willing to give? I’d take it. How’s that for ridiculous?”

Henry glanced down briefly, turning Alex’s hands over in his. When he looked up again, he was smiling faintly. “Alex, I… I may need that repeated. I’m not great at accepting when good things happen. I have a complicated history with happiness.”

“You can have it in writing,” Alex promised readily. He couldn’t have contained his wide smile if he’d tried. “Henry, you… you mean so much to me. You’ve got no idea.”

“I think I do, actually.” Henry reached up a hand, softly tracing his thumb over Alex’s cheek. “Is it weird that I still can’t quite believe that you’re here?”

“I’m here,” Alex said firmly. “Henry, can I… can I stay? I don’t know for how long, but… maybe a while? I don’t have to be back in Texas until next week.”

“Please,” Henry breathed out. He shifted a little closer. “Please, stay.”

“Okay. I will.” Alex watched curiously as Henry’s eyes flickered down to his lips. “Are you thinking about kissing me?”

That made Henry smile, a glint in his eyes that Alex wasn’t sure if he’d seen before. Henry’s thumb slowly traced the corner of Alex’s mouth. “You say that as if I ever think about anything else.”

Alex’s breath hitched. Jesus Christ. “You can. If you want to? You definitely can.”

Henry hummed thoughtfully, his hand shifting up to gently touch Alex’s still damp hair. “I do want to. It’s not that.”

“There’s no rush,” Alex added, trying desperately to read Henry’s expression. “But you... there’s no part of me that you can’t have. Just so you know, I want you to touch me. It’s very, very allowed.”

Henry’s smile widened a little. He put his other hand on Alex’s arm, almost experimentally, splaying his fingers out to reach more skin. “Like this?”

“Please,” Alex breathed out, his own gaze fixing on Henry’s lips. “Like that, but also—”

Henry leaned in, cutting Alex off mid sentence.

It was… God. It was a fantastic kiss. Their first one had been exhilarating, but this one was softer, deeper. More certain. Henry put both of his hands on Alex’s chest, and Alex easily followed his lead, let himself be pushed down onto the couch as Henry kissed him languidly, his fingers slowly exploring every inch of exposed skin he could reach. It was as if Henry was savouring each point of contact as much as he could. Alex kept his own hands steadily on Henry’s hips, carefully letting Henry set the pace, following his lead.

Eventually, Henry pushed himself back. He hovered above Alex momentarily, his eyes intent on Alex’s as he spoke again, his words coming out in a rush. “Alex, I… I want to do this so many different ways. I’ve imagined it so many different ways. I don’t even know where to start.”

Oh. Alex carefully covered one of Henry’s hands with his. Suddenly, he felt nervous. “I’m not sure if… if I can live up to any elaborate fantasy.”

“Trust me, this is already overshadowing anything I’ve imagined.” Henry’s smile softened. “That’s just the thing. With every touch, it’s like all I thought I knew changes. My whole world shifts. It’s so _much.”_

“Oh.” Alex’s heartbeat quickened. “In a good way?”

“In the best way,” Henry admitted shakily. “I’ve never been so desperate for anyone.”

“Kiss me again,” Alex breathed out. “Henry, please. Kiss me again. Please.”

With a pleased, eager, utterly irresistible smile, Henry leaned back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had much of this dialogue in my outline for _so long,_ and I'm so glad to finally have gotten these boys to this point! as you may have realized, I'm going to start wrapping this story up little by little from this point onwards. there are of course still conversations to be had and (as Alex would put it) stuff to figure out, so it's not the end quite yet. I'm so looking forward to writing what comes after this!
> 
> next up: morning coffee. (and tea. but really, emphasis on the coffee.)
> 
> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://everwitch-magiks.tumblr.com/)! ♡♡♡


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